CONFLICT 



NATURE AND LIFE 



A STUDY OF 



ANTAGONISM IN THE CONSTITUTION 
OF THINGS. 



FOR THE ELUCIDATION OF THE PROBLEM 

OF GOOD AND EVIL, AND THE RECONCILIATION OF 

OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM. 






JUN 18 1883 

7^ No... .•..'.... Q ^' 



NEW YORK: 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 

I, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET. 
I883. 






COPYRIGHT BY 

D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 
1883. 



PREFACE 



The development of the individual mind is not apt to be a 
uniform movement. It has critical stages when a new thought 
brings about a mental revolution. The writer may be permitted 
to illustrate by his own experience. He may recall as the first 
mental acquisition which necessitated new ways of looking at 
things, the idea that the brain is the organ of mind — that the 
mental faculties are dependent on physical conditions; as the 
second, the conception of natural law everywhere operative, 
which took the place of foreknowledge and predestination — these 
two allied forms of doctrine having been early forced upon his 
conviction by logical considerations on the old assumption of the 
government of the universe by personal supervision; as the third, 
the idea that mankind have made their own gods by magnifying 
and deifying human nature — this came with the shock of origi- 
nality, to discover at leisure, however, that it was the common 
property of many thinking people, and that Xenophanes had 
explicitly taught it more than two thousand years ago; as the 
fourth, the doctrine of Evolution with the multiplicity of mental 



IV PREFACE. 

readjustments which it necessitated; as the fifth, and last I shall 
name, the conception of inevitable and necessary antagonism 
in the constitution of things, in consequence of which the 
notion of universal harmony, attainable perfection, and unmixed 
happiness is Utopian and illusory. 

This last point is the subject of this volume. It is now over 
twenty years since it was first suggested to the writer's mind by 
observation and reflection on human nature and its experiences 
in life. The conception may not strike the reader as "path- 
breaking " by any means, yet such has it been to the author. 
Each of the above-named acquisitions necessitated the dropping 
of something as error, which had previously been held as truth. 
This was not less the case with the last than with any of the 
others. It revolutionized his method of looking at the possibili- 
ties of life, and changed the direction of his efforts with regard to 
those possibilities. It seemed to have a practical use, as well as 
philosophical interest; and it occurred to him then to work it 
out in some of its scientific, historical, and practical relations, 
with the hope that it might be of interest to others, and perhaps, 
not altogether without a desirable influence on conduct. The 
writer has been in no haste to organize his study of the subject 
into a book, wishing it, whenever it might take form, to be as 
little crude as possible. Besides, he has been too busy with 
more immediate and pressing interests, to make rapid progress 
in the systematic study of a philosophical problem having such a 
multiplicity of connections as this. 

The writer has been more solicitous to be true than to 
seem original. He has been more careful to strengthen the 
positions taken than to create the appearance of novelty in 
the statement of them. Between the critic who should pro- 
nounce the book true but not new, and the other who should 



PREFACE. V 

think it new, but singular and fanciful, it would be preferable to 
believe the former the more nearly correct. The principle of 
the work is not altogether new, as the author has sufficiently 
learned since it occurred to him; but the use heretofore made 
of it has been only partial and fragmentary. And however new 
the views of some of the chapters may have at one time seemed 
to the writer of them to be, a further acquaintance with the 
literature of the subject has made sad havoc with many of his 
originalities; and with every hour publication is delayed, this 
process of destruction is going on. As an example may be 
named the conception of the part Conflict plays in originating 
and strengthening sociality and political organization, the chap- 
ter on General History having been written before reading 
Mandeville, and years before Herbert Spencer's chapters, and 
Morgan's and Tylor's works, from which quotation is made on 
this subject, had been published. And quite generally it is true, 
that the quotations which have been used to corroborate state- 
ments have been met with since the chapters were written, and 
sometimes inserted without changing a word of the text. Each 
chapter bears evidence that somebody at some time and some 
place has been thinking pretty much the same thing. There 
may be some sparks of originality — still not put out — in parts of 
chapters ; but if any claim of originality were made, that con- 
cerning the ensemble would, perhaps, be most likely to bear 
scrutiny. The effect of the whole, when all the parts are 
brought together as a co-operative unit, the author should hope, 
may go some way to convince the reader that the journey is not 
to be made wholly on a beaten track, nor yet wholly in vain. 
It is impossible to write a book without covering some ground 
which has often been gone over ; so that if the author has not 
a central principle which organizes the old facts into new rela- 



VI PREFACE. 

tions with new meanings, there is perhaps no very urgent need 
for his book. This book has been written precisely because it 
was believed that it embodies such a principle, able to deter- 
mine a new application of known facts to an old study, and 
that, if, in some instances, the proof should fail, the treatment 
of the subject would nevertheless be usefully suggestive. 

Those books are most successful which coincide with opinions 
already formed, or which are at least in process of formation 
among considerable bodies of people. The happy author is he 
who expresses clearly and incisively what a great many have 
already been feeling and thinking somewhat more vaguely. 
Like Socrates, he assists at the parturition of ideas. It depends 
much on the public temper whether an author shall be con- 
demned for his pains or rewarded for his services. He may be 
sure that the leading affirmations of his book are true, and that, 
if appreciated, they would be fruitful of results; but he may 
have no assurance that the subject and his treatment of it will 
fall in so happily with the drift of the times as to secure atten- 
tion. As this volume aims to strike the Middle Way, it has not 
the advantage of extremes which startle and fascinate. Its mes- 
sage is not so jubilant as optimism requires, nor yet so terrible 
as. to administer like pessimism to the delight of desperation. 

The author has persistently struggled against the increasing 
size of the volume. Everything suggested as a foot-note has 
been rigorously suppressed. The intelligent reader will readily 
see that the chapters are but summaries on a wide range of sub- 
jects which are legitimately linked together, in one way or 
another, by the common principle of Conflict. This great 
variety of subjects, touching at certain points and appealing to 
different tastes, seemed to render it desirable that certain chap- 
ters, brief though they are, should be made as complete, each 






PREFACE. Vll 

within itself, as possible, even at the risk of some repetition. 
The principal literary aim has been so to make the statement, 
that, with a reasonable degree of care and candor in the read- 
ing, it would not be easy to mistake the meaning intended. 

The Author. 
New York, September, 1882. 



CONTENTS. 



PART FIRST. 

THE SUBJECT IN HISTORY AND LITERATURE. 



CHAPTER I. 
ANCIENT CONCEPTIONS OF ANTAGONISM AND OF THE EVILS OF LIFE. 

SECTION. PAGE. 

i. The aim — Oriental views — Chinese, Hindoos, Egyptians, Persians . i 

2. Greek views — Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Cleanthes, Anaximander, 

Empedocles, Parmenides, Zeno, Anaxagoras, Plato . 3 

3. Conflict as an element in primitive religions . . . 4 

4. Evil in fate — Herodotus, Plutarch, Seneca, Csesar, Pliny, Marcus 

Aurelius, the Stoics, and early Christians 5 

5. Greek poets on evil — Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes 

—Note ........ 7 

CHAPTER II. 

MODERN VIEWS OF PHYSICAL AND MORAL DISCORD. 

6. Notions of evil — Diversity and relations . . . -9 

7. St. Augustine's solution of the problem of evil ... 10 

8. Paley and Butler on the cause of evil . . . .11 

9. Leibnitz and King on evil ...... 13 

10. Geological difficulties — Hitchcock and M. Secretan . . .14 

11. A Philosopher, Moore, Rise and Fall, Bolingbroke, Blake, 

Gcethe, Tyndall, Morselli, Hume, Erasmus Darwin, Harrison . 15 

12. William Smith, Winwood Reade, Frances Power Cobbe . . 18 

13. Burton, Samuel Johnson, Rousseau, Bayle, Sainte Beuve, Carlyle, 

Mandeville, Lessing, Spenser, Prior .... 19 

14. The wail of poets .... . . 21 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER III. 

PESSIMISM. 

SECTION. PAGE. 

15. Schopenhauer's pessimism . . . . . .22 

16. Hartmann's more moderate pessimistic view ... 23 

17. Hartmann — Why evil must outweigh good — Weighing emotions . 24 

18. Hartmann— Most pleasures illusory — A gloomy picture . . 25 

19. Pessimism of Humboldt and Swift . . . . .26 

20. A disease of civilization — Mallock, A. Campbell, G. Smith . 27 

CHAPTER IV. 

OPTIMISM — PERFECTION AND THE GOLDEN AGES. 

21. Compensation past and future for present misery . . '3° 

22. Golden ages — Oriental, Greek, Jewish, Christian ... 30 

23. Modernized Christian view — Walker, Hitchcock . . . 32 

24. Scientists and philosophers — Lubbock, Priestly, Mill, Greg, 

Spencer . . . . . * . -33 

25. Spiritualistic optimism — Davis ..... 36 

26. Socialistic and Radical — Fourier, Comte — Difficulties . . 36 

27. General — Rousseau, Reade, Hartley, Royce ... 38 

28. Shaftesbury, Condorcet, Godwin, Pope . . . .40 

CHAPTER V. 

THE PROBLEM STATED. 

29. Optimism, pessimism, meliorism . . . . .44 

30. Opinion drifting from optimism to meliorism ... 46 

31. Different shades of meliorism — Purpose of the work . . . 47 

32. Universality of Conflict — Note on pleasure . . .48 



PART SECOND. 

CONSIDERATIONS FROM SCIENCE. 



CHAPTER VI. 

EXISTENCE. 
SECTION. PAGE. 

33. No conception possible of absolute beginning . . .51 

34. Idealism, realism, perception — Draper, Huxley — Entanglement 52 

35. Perceptions not copies — Cudworth, Reid, Stewart, Brown, Hamil- 

ton, Porter, Spencer's transfigured realism, McCosh, Lewes 54 

36. A Profession of Faith ...... "58 



CONTENTS. 



XI 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE UNIT OF PHYSICAL EXISTENCE. 
SECTION. 

37. Force and matter — Chu-hi, Faraday, Stallo, Macomber, Cooke 

Maxwell, Tait and Thomson .... 

38. The force unit — Boscovich, Faraday, Bayma, Birks, Wiener, Max 

well, M. Couchy ....... 

39. Vortex atoms — Maxwell, Tait, Helmholtz and Thomson, Wurtz 

Macomber ...... 

40. Order in the play of forces ..... 

CHAPTER VIII. 



41. 
42. 

43- 

44- 
45- 
46. 



47- 

48. 
49. 
5°- 
5 1 - 
52. 
53- 
54- 
55- 
56. 
57- 



59- 

60. 
61. 
62. 

63- 
64. 



-Newton and Young, 
3irks, Norton, Hickok, 



THE PRIMARY FORCES. 

Attraction and repulsion as primary forces . 
Accounting for attraction by repulsion- 

Glennie, LeSage, Walling, Croll 
Two primary antagonistic forces — Bayma, 

Lewes, Kant, Taylor, Maxwell ..... 

Primal force dual and antagonistic — Lame" 
Attraction and repulsion in early stages of the solar system 
Matter acquiring new properties by loss of heat — Lockyer, Fara- 
day, Crookes — Notes ...... 

CHAPTER IX. 

CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. 

The atom incomplete of itself — Affinity for other atoms 
The strife of atoms and molecules 
Affinity proportional to contrast of sensible qualities 
Three different forms of attraction — their antagonists . 
Liberation of energy by the union of atoms and molecules 
The atom never at rest ..... 
Elasticity of gases due to atomic motion— Stallo 
Opposite states necessary to a working force 
Overcoming resistance the leading idea of mechanics 
Polarity in physics and chemistry 
Obscured antagonism in orbital and vortical motion 
All the working energy of nature due to antagonism 
CHAPTER X. 



59 
63 

64 

66 



67 
69 

7i 
76 
78 

79 



83 
84 
84 
85 
87 
87 
89 
90 
90 
92 
94 



CONFLICT IN THE BIOLOGICAL FORCES, 

Opposing activities within the organism — the rising scale of antago- 
nism — Barker, Ludwig ...... 97 

Waste and repair . . ... . . . 99 

Breathing and circulation ...... 100 

Contraction and expansion of the muscles . . . 101 

Opposing factors determine the build and bulk of animals . . roi 

Conflict in plant life and in life generally — Tyndall, Ward . roi 



Xll CONTENTS. 

SECTION. PAGE. 

65. The war between species — DeCondolle, Spencer, Darwin . . 103 

66. The warfare of animals — Van Benedin, Tennyson, Arnold . 105 

67. Parasites — Van Benedin ...... 107 

68. Compensatory action between plants and animals . . 109 

69. Superiority due to Conflict . . . . . .110 

70. Persistence and divergence of type . . . . no 

71. Antagonism between growth and reproduction a typical example . no 

CHAPTER XI. 

ANTAGONISM IN THE SPHERE OF MIND. 

72. Mind and organization — Man's mind as a product of Evolution . 112 

73. Primitive man a creature of war — First inventions due to Conflict 114 

74. Communal sympathy fostered by common hostility . . .117 
7$. Mental action counter-action — Lewes, Griesinger, Schiff, Huxley, 

Piderit, Bain, Maudsley, Luys . . . . 118 

76. Analogies illustrating mental reflex action — Lewes, Spencer . 124 

jj. Contrast necessary to mental action — Spencer . . . 126 

78. Emotional reaction from one extreme to another . . . 126 

79. Antagonism by exclusion in mental action . . . 127 

80. Direct antagonism between the emotions— Buchanan . . 128 

81. Passional balance in mind and in society — Hobbes, Plato, Combe, 

Spinoza, Pope, Rousseau, Guizot, Buckle . . . 130 

82. The will the theatre of Conflict — Hartley, Bastion . . . 133 

CHAPTER XII. 

CONFLICT AS A FACTOR IN MORALS. 

83. Order and utility in the social and defensive habits of animals — 

Spencer, Darwin . . . . . . . 135 

84. Contest determining the incipient form of order . . . 137 

85. Good behavior among animals — Uncle Sam, Zeke and the oxen, self- 

restraint in animals ...... 137 

86. The Conflict which morality implies — Spencer, Hutcheson, Shaftes- 

bury, Campbell, Hickok, Lewes, London Times, Pouchet . 141 

87. The leading element of morals — Utility, stress, Stephen . . 147 

88. Incipient molality among mankind — Darwin . . . 148 

89. Courage and faithfulness the earliest virtues — Cicero . . 149 

90. Fixing moral intuitions and habits by association — Spencer, Lewes, 

Shaftesbury, Lecky . . . . - . 151 

91. Virtue founded in the plurality of interest — Tacitus, Billson . 153 

92. Origin and development of woman's chief virtue . . 156 

93. Origin and development of the property instinct — Diderot . . 158 

94. The Conflict definition of morality .... 159 

95. Religion and morality — Adaptation of moral codes — Moral heroism 

and survival ....... 160 

96. Morality as command — A joker, Duke of Argyll, Mallock — The 

sanctions of morality — Note ..... 164 



CONTENTS. Xlll 

PART THIRD. 

HISTORICAL BREVITIES ILLUSTRATING CONFLICT. 



CHAPTER XIII. 
GENERAL HISTORY. 

SECTION. PAGE. 

97. History a record of Conflict ...... 169 

98. War-necessity first unites people — Infancy — Shaftesbury, Condorcet, 

Fiske, Cicero, Morgan, Mandeville, Spencer, Tylor . 170 

99. Fealty to chiefs — Tacitus, Freeman, Lecky, McClellan — Early Ameri- 

can confederations — Woolsey ..... 175 

100. Origin of executive and legislative functions — Rowley, Spencer, 

Maine . . . . . . 177 

101. National integration and disintegration .... 181 

102. Progress and reaction — Stagnant China— Japan — The Jews . 182 

103. The discord of class-interests increases with development . . 185 

CHAPTER XIV. 

GRECIAN HISTORY. 

104. Forms of Conflict in Greece ...... 186 

105. Athenian culture ....... 187 

106. Oligarchy versus democracy ...... 187 

107. btate autonomy versus nationality . * - . . 188 

108. State-alliances versus state-alliances ..... 191 

109. Greece succumbed for want of nationality . . . 192 
no. The fashion of war too strong for the traditions of kinship . 193 
in. Development in Athens with stagnation in Sparta . . 195 

112. The good and evil of unscrupulous conflict .... 195 

113. Growing rationality versus tradition . . . . 197 

CHAPTER XV. 

ROMAN HISTORY — THE REPUBLIC. 

114. Early leagues among the Latin kindred .... 199 

115. Struggle of different peoples on Italian soil . . . 199 

116. The plebeian struggle for political rights .... 200 

117. The binding and explosive forces within Rome . . . 202 

118. Slavery and piracy ....... 204 

119. Social and civil wars and the fall of the commonwealth . 205 

CHAPTER XVI. 

ROMAN HISTORY— THE EMPIRE. 

120. Centers of conflict — Aggression versus resistance. . . . . 205 

121. Debauchery within, aggression without .... 207 

122. Rigidity of virtue necessary to the greatness of peoples . . 208 



XIV CONTENTS. 

SECTION. PAGE. 

123. Developing weakness within ..... 208 

124. Religious dissension — Donatists, Arians, natures of Christ, images, 

— Paulicians . . . . . . .210 

125. The Blues and Greens ...... 213 

126. Prelude to the fall, and fall of Constantinople . . . 214 

127. Fall of the empire into municipal fragments — Roscher . . 214 

128. Rise of the New from a complication of disturbance and conflict . 215 

CHAPTER XVII. 

EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 

129. Early struggles on English soil ..... 218 

130. Minor conflicts — Unity and freedom through struggle — Magna 

Charta . . . . ... . 220 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 

131. Paradoxes of like and unlike systems — Feudalism and patriarchalism 

— Maine ....... 222 

132. A question to whom fealty due ..... 224 

133. The fall of feudalism by the growth of civilization — Freeman . 225 

CHAPTER XIX. 

THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM UNDER CONTACT WITH OTHER SYSTEMS. 

134. With Judaism — Christianity composite by derivation . . 227 

135. With Paganism — Became polytheistic and idolatrous . . 228 

136. With the religions of the East — Gnosticism, Monachism, Mani- 

cheanism, the Marcionites, Paulicans, Albigenses, Calvin . 229 

137. With Mohammedanism — Without influence on each other . 232 

CHAPTER XX. 

PAPAL SUPREMACY. 

138. The spiritual and temporal powers — The spiritual gets the upper 

hand ........ 234 

139. Rise of learning and decline of the Papal power . • 236 

CHAPTER XXI. 

THE GREAT MODERN CONFLICT. 

140. Innovation in primitive society, and later .... 237 

141. Kingcraft gained as priestcraft lost — Reformation — Finalities — Per- 

secution by Protestants — Tolerance through conflict . 239 

142. Political action and reaction in France and England . . . 244 

143. Traditions and dogmas vs. science — Mosaic geology — Theological 

"cranks" — Science and religion not antagonistic . . 244 

144. Change in the war of ideas — modified persecution — Greater sensi- 

bility — Loss with gain . . . . .251 

145. Incompatible ideas and methods of the same mind . . 252 

146. Two kinds of conservatism and two of liberalism . . . 253 



CONTENTS. 



XV 



CHAPTER XXII. 
ANTAGONISM AS A FACTOR OF EVOLUTION. 
SECTION. 

147. Spencer's general definition of evolution 

148. Spencer's more distinctive definitions of evolution 

149. The line of motion under conflicting forces 

150. Rhythm a corollary of antagonism 

151. Conditions of mobility necessary to evolution 

152. Heterogeneity under action and re-action. 

153. Segregation and integration .... 

154. Antagonism a necessary condition of natural selection . 

155. The tendency toward equilibrium 

156. The relative claims of antagonism and persistence 

157. Priority of antagonism over persistence 

158. Spencer's view that persistence is an ultimate datum of conscious- 

ness ........ 

159. Counter-movement — Chauncey Wright — Degradation and dissolu 

tion as well as evolution — Cannot identify the maximum of gen 
eral development .... 

160. Equilibrium — Blessedness or death ? . . . . 

161. The moving equilibrium — Evolution advances pain as well as 

pleasure ...... 



PAGE. 

256 
258 

259 
260 
261 
262 
263 
265 
266 
269 
266 

272 



275 
278 



279 



PART FIFTH. 

EVIL IN RELATION TO THE NECESSARY CONDITIONS OF LIFE. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

PARADOXES OF FEELING IN RELATION TO FUNCTION. 
SECTION. PAGE. 

162. Invigorating function pleasurable . . . . . 284 

163. Buoyancy of temper favors early marriage and the sum of happiness 286 

164. Stimulants pleasurable — Harm in excess . . . 287 

165. Labor a choice of evils — The price paid for enjoyment . . 288 

166. Proper labor invigorates — Mental growth and business necessity — 

Work and progress — Ease versus development . . 290 

167. Spencer's transmutation of labor into pleasure — Labor essentially 

repugnant and becoming more so ... 292 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
MAN'S ENVIRONMENT— GEOLOGICAL CONDITIONS. 

168. Aqueous agencies conditions of life — Wearing away the land . 296 

169. Volcanic and aqueous action antagonistic and co-operative . 299 



XVI CONTENTS. 

SECTION. PAGE. 

170. Pain from the antagonistic action which makes earth habitable — 

Torre del Greco ....... 302 

171. Ante-geological theories of the earth — Burnet, Dick, Wesley, Gis- 

borne, Lyell ....... 304 

CHAPTER XXV. 

MAN'S ENVIRONMENT — ATMOSPHERIC AND OCEANIC CURRENTS. 

172. Ocean currents — Exchange of cold and warm waters makes life 

possible . . . . , . . 305 

173. Atmospheric currents ...... 308 

174. Counter currents of air and ocean and counter causes . . 310 

175. Discord and pain from the meteorological conditions of life . 310 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

MAN'S ENVIRONMENT— LIMITATIONS OF THE HABITABLE AREA. 

176. Extending the habitable area ..... 312 

177. Desolation of lands by clearing and culture — Geikie, Marsh, 

Oswald — Terracing — Ruskin .... 313 

178. Difficulty of conserving the soil — Immediate, versus remote, inter- 

ests ........ 318 

179. Absolute limitation of the habitable area . . . 320 

180. Disturbances from change of climate — An ice age . . . 322 

181. Oscillations of climate due to precession and eccentricity . 324 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

MAN'S ENVIRONMENT — ECONOMICAL DIFFICULTIES OF LIMITATION. 

182. Multiplying demands of increasing population versus supply by 

increasing labor, capital, and invention . . . 328 

183. Progressive exactions of multiplying wants . . . 334 

184. Will all the vacant places of the earth be filled up ? . . 336 

185. Change of diet through over-population — Exclusive vegetable 

food ........ 338 

186. Best results from a mixed diet ..... 340 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

THE FUTURE OF PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT. 

187. The possibility of harmony between man and his environment 

considered . . . . . . . 344 

188. What would relieve physical discord would deteriorate the condi- 

tions of life ....... 345 

189. Our present period may be the happiest — Alphonse de Con- 

dolle ........ 347 

190. Visonary schemes for remodeling the environment . . . 350 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

ORIGIN AND CONFLICT OF NATURAL LAWS. 

191. What a law of nature is, and when it arises . . . 352 



CONTENTS. Xvil 

SECTION. PAGE. 

192. Interruption of one train of physical sequences by another . . 354 

193. Interference with organic action — Higher organisms easily dis- 

turbed ....... 355 

194. Races and institutions conserved by sacrifice for the general good . 357 

195. Exclusion of one good by another — Good from evil and evil from 

good . . . . . . . . 359 



PART SIXTH. 

THE OUTLOOK, SOCIAL AND MORAL. 



CHAPTER XXX. 



SANITARY CONDITIONS. 



SECTION. PAGE. 

196. Ineradicable causes of disease — Malaria — Tropical heat . . 363 

197. Increase of death-rate with greater density of population — 

Brassey ....... 365 

198. Conserving the feeble — Le Conte, Black, Darwin — The enfeebling 

vanities —Frances Power Cobbe ..... 366 

199. Mining and machine industries — Nervous diseases — Dr. Beard — 

Insanity — Suicide . . . . . . 369 

200. The race overweighted — Galton — Human sacrifice . . . 373 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

PROSPECTS OF THE COMMON, WORKING PEOPLE. 

201. Influence of education on the happiness of the worker — Mande- 

ville ........ 374 

202. High wages and short hours, saving and improvement — Brassey, 

Greg, Florence Nightingale . 376 

203. The drift under education to the cities and to fancy industries — 

Thompson, M. Salacis — Home influence — Race education — 
Emily Pfeiffer-^High life in Rome — The worst most imi- 
tated — Teaching limited ... . . 379 

204. Improvement and discontent — De Tocqueville, Lecky — Vanity and 

degeneracy — Royce — Fashion in the church — Purifying civili- 
zation and comforting the lowly— Pleasure of discontent . 385 

205 — Adjustment of the laborer to his work — Mobility and diversified 

skill — Industrial education — Future changes . . 390 

206. Competition among laborers — The economical harmonies — 

Perry 394 



XV111 CONTENTS. 

SECTION. PAGE, 

207. Henry George's attack on Malthus — Ignoring capital — Persistence 

— Roscher — Causes of famines — Wealth and subsistence . 396 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

INFLUENCE OF THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY OF CLASSES ON SOCIETY. 

208. Incompatible facts — Arrest and acceleration of reproduction — 

Population not necessarily stationary under high civilization . 400 

209. Prolificacy in classes — Xo escape from toil— Beard — Education ver- 

sus psychological elevation — Wright and Lowell — The great 
middle class ....... 404 

210. Race multiplication — Intermixture and new races — Relative mor- 

tality ........ 408 

211. Development in careers — Blood and brain necessary to elevation- 

Development of the individual mind — Improvement of mental 

type ........ 412 

212. Recent progress — Reacting forces and the see-saw of nations — 

Summary of influences affecting the coming man — Note . 417 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

THE MARRIAGE RELATION. 

213. Protean forms of marriage ...... 420 

214. Diversification of temper and increasing difficulties of marriage — Le 

Conte ....... 421 

215. Increase of physical and mental divergencies between men and 

women ........ 423 

216. Forms of divergence between the sexes — Controlling discordances 

of temper ....... 425 

217. What marriage is — Conflicting views — Legality — The sentimental 

views — Mrs. Faucett — Education of children . . . 429 

218. Moral and physiological discordance — Sex strengthened with civili- 

zation ....... 431 

219. Marriage and prostitution — Lecky, Mandeville, Woolsey . . 433 

220. The right of maternity subordinated to a higher law . . 435 

221. Necessary origin of monogamic marriage under the play of social 

forces ........ 437 

222. Affectional freedom — Differentiated marriage — Counter elements in 

marriage ....... 438 

223. Modifications of marriage in the future — The Nation, Morgan — No 

matrimonial Utopia ...... 443 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

THE RELIGIOUS CONSOLATIONS. 

224. Element of fear in primitive religions. .... 446 



CONTENTS. XIX 

SECTION. PAGE. 

225. Immortality — Devils versus angels— Dread versus joy — Heaven and 

hell corollaries — Suffering of the lost adding to the happiness 

of the saved — Peter Lombard, Edwards . . . 447 

226. Thinking versus believing — Doubtful compensation for loss of ani- 

mistic faith . . . . . . . 451 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

PLEASURE AND PAIN INSEPARABLE. 

227. Pain necessary to the consciousness of pleasure . . . 454 

228. Sensation and its stimulus — Pleasures pall — Wealth and happiness 

■ — Cost of pleasures — Seneca .... 455 

229. Mixed character of desire — Avoiding pain and seeking pleasure — 

Sully — Self-restraint as the price of pleasure Franklin's 

moral algebra ....... 459 

230. Overcoming opposition — Pains of labor necessary to pleasure of 

attainment ...... 461 

231. The measure of satisfaction with wealth and office . . 462 

232. Pleasure and pain proportional — Bouillier, Hinton — Same nerves for 

both — Enjoyment with high development — Mill, Wollaston 464 

233. Utopia the creation of something out of nothing — Note, Saxon, 

Romanes, Hinton ...... 466 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 
USES IN GENERAL, SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 

234. The doctrine as a chart for direction — The best apt to do futile work 

— Optimistic and despondent temperaments — Sully . 469 

235. Artistic temperament and perfection — Panaceas — General indiffer- 

ence — Chartist and anti-corn law agitations — Guidance for san- 
guine reformers ....... 472 

236. Incompatible forms of reputed good — The sequel of prosperity — 

Careers of movement ..... 475 

237. The doctrine in relation to effort — Manliness of struggle — Caird — 

No warrant for insensibility— Bryant .... 478 

238. Not incompatible with evolution .... 479 

239. Shadows of good — Ours one of the happiest of human eras . 480 

240. Extremes in thought and action — Meliorism versus optimism and 

pessimism ....... 481 

241. Active minds most in need of guidance .... 482 

242. Resignation — Spinoza, Seneca, Davids, Beard — Fortitude — The 

dying colonels ...... 483 

243. The Mean or Middle Way— The price of happiness . . 484 

244. Logical value of the doctrine ..... 486 

245. The directive element growing out of scientific and industrial 
changes ........ 486 

246. Any doctrine best recommended by its truth . . . 488 



CONFLICT IN NATURE AND IN LIFE, 



PART FIRST. 

THE SUBJECT IN HISTORY AND LITERATURE. 



CHAPTER I. 

ANCIENT CONCEPTIONS OF NECESSARY ANTAGONISM AND OF THE 
EVILS OF LIFE. 

Section i. — There are two leading ideas of the subject con- 
templated: first, conflict in the relation of things; and secondly, 
the discord and pain which attend such conflict. The first, or 
that of physical conflict, has often been conceived of without 
being made the basis of an explanation of the evil in the world. 
Many of the views which follow regard physical antagonism as 
quite distinct from evil, or they regard evil as having no neces- 
sary connection with antagonism. It is the design here to bring 
the two together and show that they are related. If there is 
antagonism in the constitution of nature, the evil, both physical 
and moral, which exists, may be largely due to this antagonism, 
and itself a form of it, and thus as ineradicable as the constitu- 
tion of nature itself. 

Dualism, antagonism, and resulting evil are fundamental con- 
ceptions in the Oriental systems of philosophy and religion. 

Chinese philosophy has long recognized the opposite prop- 
erties of the two cardinal elements of nature. These are primal 



2 ANCIENT CONCEPTIONS. \Chap. I 

force and primal matter ; the one is the Yang, the active prin- 
ciple, the other the Yin, the passive principle, of all move- 
ment. The Yang and Yin are thus the polar forces from which 
proceed all action, all evolution. The law of balance is the 
order of nature. The Yang and Yin lie at the base of a general 
philosophical system which molds religion, morals, and the prac- 
tical phases of life. 

In the system of the Hindoos, matter and spirit stand in cer- 
tain relations of antagonism to each other. Matter only be- 
comes active in the production of phenomena under coercion 
by the spiritual principle, to which, however, it yields only in a 
partial and refractory manner; and hence, the evils of the world. 
While they hold that good and evil are dispensed by the same 
divine hand, yet the Hindoos have their good and evil deities. 
Vishnu and Indra are especially concerned for the welfare of 
mankind, while Ravana and his legion of evil spirits seek to do 
evil. The Sooras and Assooras represent good and evil as em- 
bodied in spirit and matter, and are perpetually at war. 

In India, the good spirits, the Sooras, are the step brothers of 
the evil spirits, the Assooras; as, in Egypt, Osiris, the good deity, 
was the twin brother of Typho, the god of evil. 

Antagonism is even more pronounced in the Persian system. 
From the supreme and uncreated One proceeded two equal and 
antagonistic powers, which are forever battling for the upper 
hand in the control of the world. Ormuzd, the god of light, 
created a hierarchy of good spirits to attend to all things in the 
interest of good, whereupon Ahrimanes created an equal hierar- 
chy of bad spirits to be everywhere present in the interest of 
evil. A good and an evil spirit attend every human being from 
birth to death, struggling with each other for the mastery over 
him. 

Religions, like migrations, drifted westward, and these battle 
doctrines of the East have not been without influence on the 
religious and philosophical creeds of the West. And they acted 
the more readily as they fell in with the natural experiences of 
human life. The doctrine concerning Satan, the adversary of 



Sec. 2.] GREEK VIEWS. 3 

God and man, was accepted by the Jews on their acquaintance 
with Persian dualism, and thence it found its way into the faith 
of the early Christians and spread throughout the world with 
trie Christian system. Through a somewhat distinct line of 
more philosophical character, this strongly marked dualism of 
the Christian creed may be traced back through the Gnostics, 
Mani and Marcion, and the Fathers, Tatian and Justin Martyr, 
to the Brahminical doctrine which affirms the essential and 
eternal malignity of matter. This same doctrine, either by 
propagandism or by native reproduction, found its way into 
Greek philosophy, and through it into the general thought of 
European peoples. 

Section 2. — Pythagoras held the principle of all things to be 
unity from which went forth an infinite dualism. His fol- 
lowers recognized certain co-ordinates, or offsetting principles, as 
finite and infinite, odd and even, the one and the many, the 
right and the left, male and female, light and darkness, good and 
evil, etc. The system viewed the world as harmonic, but re- 
garded it as a combination of contraries. 

Heraclitus maintained that fire, acting by opposite tendencies, 
is the cause of all the activities in nature, and that the products 
consist of contraries, so that even the good is evil, the living is 
dead, etc. Out of these conflicting impulses came what he re- 
garded as "harmony." If "all life is change and change is 
strife," as he affirms, then is life but one of the forms of conflict. 
The suggestiveness to the ancient mind of the conflict in nature 
is shown by Heraclitus' doctrine, "That strife between opposite 
tendencies is the parent of all things." Cleanthes sings in his 
Hymn to Jupiter: 

"Thy hand, educing good from evil, brings 
To one apt harmony the strife of things." 

Anaximander of Miletus held that from a divine substance of 
indefinite form in infinite space, all individual objects are pro- 
jected by the separation of opposites. 

Empedocles conceived of the activity of nature as dualistic, 
consisting in the reciprocal or complemental play of combina- 



4 ANCIENT CONCEPTIONS. [Ckap. L 

tion and dissolution. Back of the phenomenal lay the forces of 
love and hate ; the function of love being to combine, that of 
hate to dissolve. Love is, therefore, the creative, and hate the 
destructive power.in the phenomenal world, where "all the mem- 
bers of God war together one after the other." 
. Parmenides conceived of the opposite principles in nature as, 
fire the ethereal essence, and night the phenomenal. 

According to Zeno, the stoic, nothing exists without its con- 
trary, as, the truth implies falsehood, and good is accompanied 
with necessary evil. It is especially to our purpose to note that, 
"Zeno, forming his views after the Ephesian Heraclitus, intro- 
duced even into his primordial matter a dynamic antagonism and 
a movement of fluctuation up and down." — (Grote, L, 513). 

Anaxagoras taught the Eastern idea of the antagonism of mind 
and matter. Plato was by instinct an a priori optimist ; that is, 
God took things as he found them, and did with them the very 
best that was possible. Being good he must do what was best. 
In Plato's system, God and matter are from eternity distinct and 
opposite in character. Intelligence is good, but matter is, in 
consequence of its refractory nature, the source of all evil. Plato 
teaches that "contraries are produced from contraries," that 
there is reciprocity in the production and reproduction of things, 
and that, if this were not so, but " generation direct from one 
thing alone into its opposite," " all things would at length have 
the same form, be in the same state, and cease to be pro- 
duced." The necessary association of pleasure and pain is 
thus given : " What an unaccountable thing, my friends, that 
seems to be, which men call pleasure ; and how wonderfully is it 
related towards that which appears to be its contrary, pain ; in 
that they will not both be present to a man at the same time, yet, 
if any one pursues and attends the one, he is almost always com- 
pelled to receive the other, as if they were united together from 
one head." — (Plato, L, 57). 

Section 3. — Strife, battle, and all that pertains thereto have 
always occupied a large share of human attention. This was, 
of course, made necessary by the universal experiences of life. 



Sec. 4.] MELANCHOLY VIEW OF LIFE. 5 

Religion had its origin among primitive peoples through the 
contests they were compelled to wage with the powers of nature. 
It was in defeat, which they attributed to the interference of 
supernatural beings, that their emotional nature was most stirred, 
and they devised methods of placating such beings. The 
earliest gods were interested mainly in visiting evil on mankind. 
Religion was built up on the uncertain struggles of life; and out 
of this no doubt grew the deification of chieftains, strong in 
battle during life, and able and willing now, if honored with 
attentions, to avert defeat and other forms of evil. The gods of 
rude peoples are often beings of cruelty and horror exacting for 
their pleasure the sacrifice of the most precious things. Human 
beings have been sacrificed even on trivial occasions and for 
fanciful reasons. Most of the ancient gods were in the habit 
of inflicting pain upon very much such pretexts as men use; but 
among the Greeks it was especially the mission of the Furies to 
execute the vengeance of the gods and torment mankind. 
Black cattle were offered as a fitting sacrifice to the "infernal 
Jupiter," Night and the Furies. Among almost every people until 
far advanced in civilization, the worship of the gods of strife and 
war have possessed the most absorbing interest. This was true 
of the worship of Mars even at Rome. The chief god of the 
ancient Scythians was an iron cimeter fixed in the earth. And 
among our ancestors, the ancient Germans, death in battle was 
held to be the best preparation for the life hereafter. 

Section 4. — Among the ancients we find recognition in prac- 
tical life of the fatality of evil. This no doubt originated the 
story that, when a fit of tenderness seized upon Xerxes and he 
fell to weeping as he looked upon his vast army and reflected that 
in one hundred years not an individual in it would be alive, Arta- 
banus, his uncle, observed to him that death was not the greatest 
of evils, as in all that host there was probably not one who had not 
many times wished for death as a relief from the greater miseries 
of existence. Herodotus' avenging Nemesis is a witness to the 
same melancholy view of life. The envy of the gods would not 
permit continuous prosperity and unmixed happiness; and Amasis 



6 ANCIENT CONCEPTIONS. [Chap. I. 

advised his friend, Polycrates, to do something to bring calamity 
upon himself in order to avert the jealousy of the gods and 
secure the prosperity which might remain. Solon is represented 
in an interview with Croesus, king of Lydia, to liken life to a 
contest in which there is uncertainty and danger to the end. 
Camillus' prayer on the taking of Veii assumes that so great a 
success must be attended with some necessary evil. On the 
same principle Fabius wanted a successor appointed to Scipio, 
whose successes were so great as to threaten misfortune. Paulus 
^Emilius found confirmation of the same doctrine when he lost 
his sons, one just before his triumph over Perseus, and another 
just afterward, while the sons of the conquered king still lived; 
and ./Emilius is made to exclaim : " Nay, when I arrived safe 
among my countrymen, and beheld the city full of joy, festivity, 
and gratitude, still I suspected fortune, knowing that she grants us 
no favors without some mixture of uneasiness,~or tribute of pain," 
Plutarch thought " that, perhaps, there is some superior being, 
whose office it is to cast a shade upon any great and eminent 
prosperity, and so to mingle the lot of human life that it may 
not be perfectly free from calamity;" and on this basis he 
explains the domestic misfortune of Pompey the Great. Seneca 
declared that "the whole of life is lamentable," and death "the 
best invention of nature." Caesar contended that death was not 
a punishment but the end of human suffering. Pliny the elder 
believed that "no mortal is happy," and held that human 
beings are worse off in this respect than the lower animals. He 
doubted whether nature is to man a kind parent or a cruel step- 
mother, and believed the evils of life to be so great that death 
had been granted as man's chief good. The good emperor, 
Marcus Aurelius, was an optimistic philosopher, yet he declares 
that "life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn." The stoical 
solution of the problem of evil is founded on a definition which 
begs the question : "Nothing is evil," says Marcus Aurelius, 
"that is according to nature ;" and Seneca observes that "many 
afflictions may befall a good man, but no evil." And the good 
emperor illustrates : " But death certainly, and life, honor and 



Sec. J.] PESSIMISM IN GREEK POETRY. 7 

dishonor, pain and pleasure, all these things equally happen to 
good and bad men, being things which make us neither better 
nor worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil." — (Long. 
M. Aurelius Antoninus, section II. , 17, 11.) And Seneca 
defines "pleasures and pains, prosperity and adversity, which can 
only operate upon our outward condition, without any proper 
and necessary effect on the mind," as things which are "in 
themselves neither good nor evil." — (Morals, 129.) 

The New Testament view of the natural life of man is a 
thoroughly pessimistic one. The redemption purchased by the 
blood of Christ is most esteemed for the deliverance it brings 
from "this present evil world." It is declared that, "If any 
man love the world the love of the Father is not in him." And 
the glory of the life to come is most fully brought into relief by 
contrast with the pessimistic gloom which brooded over all 
earthly things. The kingdom of God and the kingdom of this 
world were set over against each other as opposite in character. 
Life here had value only as the battle-ground where Christians 
might win the victory of eternal life. It is but the extreme of 
this idea that has animated the ascetics of all religions. The 
ancient Stoic admitted the afflictions of life, but put them aside 
as if they were not, by his philosophical views of moral conduct; 
the ancient Christian recognized the evils of life, but triumphed 
over them by the exaltation of his faith in the life to come. 

Section 5. — The Greek poets are full of the desponding view 
of life. Evil is wrapped up in Fate, and Fate dominates even 
the gods: 

" The necessary ill 
Will come; its fatal course no god can check." 

— [Megara in Euripides. 

In the tragic vein evil is affirmed to outweigh the good ; but 
this appears to have been a disputed point : 

"Warmly this argument with others oft 
Have I disputed, who assert that ill 
To mortal man assigned outweighs the good, 
Far otherwise I deem, that good is dealt 
To man in larger portions: were it not, 
We could not bear the light of life." — [Theseus in Euripides. 



8 ANCIENT CONCEPTIONS. \Cha,p. L 

Homer sums it up in this philosophical way: 

" Two urns by Jove's high throne have ever stood, 
The source of evil one, the one of good. 
From thence the cup of mortal man he fills, 
Blessings to these, to those distributes ills; 
To most he mingles both; the wretch decreed 
To taste the bad, unmixed, is cursed indeed, 
The happiest taste not happiness sincere, 
But find the cordial draft is dashed with care. " 

— [Achilles to Priam, 

Sophocles makes Philoctetes say : 

" I did not doubt it:' evil never dies; 
The gods take care of that: if aught there be 
Fraudful and vile , 'tis safe; the good and just 
Perish unpi tied by them." 

In a similar vein is justice denied as an attribute of the gods: 

"Adic. — What is justice? 

There is no such thing — I traverse your appeal. 
Die. — How, no, such thing as justice? 
Adic. — No, where is it? 

Die. — With the immortal gods. 
Adic. — If it be there, 

How chanced it Jupiter himself escaped 
For his unnatural deeds to his own father?" 

— [A ristophanes. 

Still it was the pious humor to declare that the gods were just. 
In Euripides it is affirmed that "no mortal man is happy;" 
that one may be more fortunate than another merely. And 
again : 

"The happiest fate of man is not to be; 

And next in bliss is he who, soon as born, 
From the vain world and all its sorrows free, 

Shall whence he came with speediest foot return. " 

The Greeks had a saying that those whom the gods love die 
young; and this coincides with the story of the Greek mother 
who, in the evening, prayed to the gods to bestow upon her sons 
their most precious gift: the prayer was answered, and in the 
morning she found her sons dead. Yet, notwithstanding this 
saying, and the moral of this apologue, the Greeks appear to 
have been a people who made the most of life and enjoyed it, 



Sec. 6.] REPETITION OF GLOOMY VIEWS. 9 

while they had no high opinion of the shadowy existence in 
Hades. 

While there were ancients who had a vague idea of the strife 
or conflict in nature, they did not assume this as the basis of 
necessary evil and human suffering; they referred the miseries 
of existence to a different source — to the decrees of Fate and 
the humor of the gods. In all the concernments of life 
religion overwhelmed philosophy and science. 

NOTE. — The statements of this chapter are to be found in books which are in 
most libraries, and few, if any of them, call for reference. They are in some 
sort the common possession of reading people. This, however, is not true of the 
statements in all the chapters of this book. The author would have been glad 
to give references, but the volume threatened to attain a size which would render 
this undesirable; and formal references have generally been omitted. Not all the 
quotations given have been taken direct from their authors. Whatever seemed 
to the purpose has been used, wherever found, provided the source seemed to be 
of sufficient authority. On disputed points more care has been taken to name 
the authorities given. 

It may be added concerning the many extracts from authors nearly to the 
same points in the following and Fourth chapters, and to a less extent in others 
of the earlier chapters of the volume, that, while the method is not in the line 
of artistic book-making, it was adopted as the most authoritative means to the 
end in view. The reader may imagine some of these to be foot-notes, as there 
are no other, and touch them lightly, if he wishes. 



CHAPTER II. 

MODERN VIEWS OF MORAL AND PHYSICAL DISCORD. 

Section 6. — These ancient views have been repeated from time 
to time throughout the entire intellectual history of the world. 
How much the doctrines of one period have influenced the 
formation of similar doctrines at a later period, it is impossible 
in most instances now to ascertain. The human mind in like 



IO MODERN VIEWS. \Chap. II. 

phases of evolution, is sure to fall into similar trains of thought, 
and work out independently similar systems of doctrine. But 
while the nucleus may be even identical, the ultimate form may 
be so shaded by the prevailing fashions of opinion at different 
periods of elaboration, as frequently to obscure the identity. 
The diversity is due rather to the different intellectual garniture 
of different nations, peoples, and periods, than to any essential 
difference in the constitution of mind, or in its methods of 
manifestation. The same nation in different stages of its 
career may evince different and even contradictory phases of 
thought and feeling. While rising it may be hopeful and buoy- 
ant, and optimism prevail; while sinking, despondency may 
attend calamity, and a pessimistic cloud brood over all. 

The discussion of the difficulties concerning the constitution 
of the world in regard to discord and evil, became very different 
under the Christian scheme from what it had been in classical 
times. The old philosophers were little influenced by the pre- 
vailing systems of religion; but under the dogmas of Christianity 
the problem could not be divorced from theological considera- 
tions. It had become the leading idea that man has an immor- 
tal soul which is involved in sin, and in great danger of being 
lost. The whole question of physical and moral discord was 
merged in religious considerations concerning the origin and 
consequence of sin. 

Section 7. — St. Augustine took hold of the subject with a 
determined hand, treating it metaphysically, and with a fertility of 
resource to which even the sophisms of his method bear witness. 
According to his view, sovereign good is that which cannot be 
corrupted. What is not good cannot be corrupted. Therefore, 
corruption implies good but not sovereign good. Things wholly 
deprived of good must cease to be; "for if they shall be, and can 
now no longer be corrupted, they shall be better than before, 
because they shall abide incorruptibly. And what more mon- 
strous than to affirm things to become better by losing all their 
good ? Therefore if they shall be deprived of all good, they 
shall no longer be. So long therefore as they are, they are good : 



Sec /.] ST. AUGUSTINE ON EVIL. II 

therefore, whatever is is good. That evil then which I sought 
whence it is, is not any substance : for were it a substance it 
should be good. For either it shall be an incorruptible sub- 
stance, and so a chief good; or a corruptible substance, which 
unless it were good could not be corrupted. I perceive there- 
fore, and it was manifested to me, that Thou madest all things 
good." " Since no nature whatever is evil, and the name [evil] 
belongeth only to privation of good, but from things earthly to 
things heavenly, from things visible to things invisible, some 
things are better than others, being good; being unequal to this 
end, that they all might be." " And to Thee is nothing whatso- 
ever evil: Yea, not only to Thee, but also to thy creatures as a 
whole, because there is nothing without, which may break in and 
corrupt that order which thou hast appointed it. But in the 
parts thereof some things, because unharmonizing with other 
some, are accounted evil; whereas those very things harmonize 
with others, and are good; and in themselves are good. And 
all these things which harmonize not together, do yet (harmon- 
ize) with the inferior part, which we call earth, having its own 
cloudy and windy sky harmonizing with it." " I did not now 
long for things better, because I conceived of all; and with a 
sounder judgment I comprehended that the things above were 
better than those below, but all together better than those above 
by themselves." " And I inquired what iniquity was, and found 
it to be no substance, but a perversion of the will, turned aside 
from Thee, O God, the Supreme, towards these lower beings, 
and casting out his bowels, and puffed up outwardly." — (Con- 
fessions, chapter vil). Thus is God exculpated and man made 
responsible. This view of the negative character of evil has been 
worked over and over from that day to this, and is still to be 
found in the current discussions of the question of evil. 

Section 8. — Under the doctrine of the government of the 
world by special Providence, the problem of evil was more 
formidable than it is under the modern idea of government by 
law. Well might the human mind falter in presence of the 
difficulty of explaining how evil and suffering came to exist, 



12 MODERN VIEWS. [Chap. II. 

when the Creator and Ruler of the world is infinite in wisdom, 
goodness, and power. In the popular religion of the Greeks 
the difficulty was not so great, since the gods themselves were 
made subject to inexorable fate. This difficulty of the Christian 
theist is akin to that of the Orientalists, who resorted to logical 
subterfuges to maintain their Supreme Intelligence free from the 
taint of matter. In the modern view, the system of natural 
law, or of perpetual sequence, not being interfered with or 
thwarted, becomes essentially but another form of fate. Theo- 
logians have availed themselves of the idea of persistent law to 
explain the existence of evil in keeping with the attributes of 
the Creator. Paley speaks of the thwarting or crossing of the 
natural laws; that is, he explains discord to be necessary conflict, 
though he expresses it mildly as inconveniences. "Of the origin 
of evil," he says, "no universal solution has been discovered; 
I mean no solution which reaches to all cases of complaint. 
The most comprehensive is that which arises from the consider- 
ation of general rules. We may, I think, without much diffi- 
culty, be brought to admit the four following points : First, that 
important advantages may accrue to the universe from the order 
of nature proceeding according to general laws; secondly, that 
general laws, however well set and constituted, often thwart 
and cross one another ; thirdly, that from these thwartings and 
crossings frequent particular inconveniences will arise ; and, 
fourthly, that it agrees with our observation to suppose that 
some degree of these inconveniences takes place in the works 
of nature." — (Natural Theology, 300). Bishop Butler observes: 
"Now, that which affords a sufficient answer to objections 
against the wisdom, justice, and goodness of the constitution of 
nature, is its being a constitution, a system or scheme, in which 
means are made use of to accomplish ends, and which is carried 
on by general laws." — (Analogy, 249). This, of course, assumes 
that ours is the best possible universe; and this implies that if 
the Maker of this universe is all-wise, all-good, and all-just, He 
is not all-powerful. 



Se& p.] LEIBNITZ AND KING ON EVIL. 13 

Section 9, — The magnificent theory of Leibnitz on the origin 
of evil is, that God in the beginning having revolved in his 
mind the conceptions of all possible worlds, decided in the 
interest of beneficence to order into existence the best one of 
them all. But from the dire experience of mankind, we know 
that this best possible world is full of evil; therefore, was God 
not able to overcome whatever it is that causes discord and pain. 
Orientalists found the cause of evil in the refractory character of 
matter; Leibnitz in the absolute character of essences and abstract 
forms. In the one case evil was referred to physical causes, in 
the other to metaphysical. Leibnitz says: "Evil comes rather 
from the abstract forms themselves; that is to say, from ideas 
which God has not produced by an act of his will, any more than 
numbers or configuration, and any more, in short, than all pos- 
sible essences, which should be reckoned eternal and necessary — 
for they are found in the ideal region of possibles — that is to 
say, in the divine understanding." — (Quoted by Dr. Chalmers in 
Natural Theology.) On this view he affirms that God does not 
make wicked men; they are so from eternity, and are so freely, 
whatever that may mean. Thus is Leibnitz' God subject to the 
eternal and necessary ideas and essences, or abstract forms of 
fate, in the creation of the world, as Zeus and the other gods of 
the Greek Pantheon were subject to the personal form of Fate 
in ruling the world. As Plato's God works to patterns he did 
not create, so Leibnitz' God is hampered by necessities he can- 
not control. 

William King, Lord Archbishop of Dublin, who wrote on the 
Origin of Evil two centuries ago, recognized similar metaphysi- 
cal difficulties, only that they were still more intensely metaphys- 
ical, and on this basis he derived imperfection and evil in the 
actual world from the infinite goodness of God. He sets out 
with the affirmation that God cannot create a perfect being ; 
which is quite unlike another metaphysical notion that whatever 
God creates must necessarily be perfect as it comes from his 
hand. But the Lord Archbishop's reasons why God cannot cre- 
ate a perfect thing are unanswerable, being as follows: That a per- 






14 MODERN CONCEPTIONS. \Chafi. II, 

feet being would be self-existent, and if absolutely perfect would 
be God. He then proceeds to the solution of the problem: 
11 God might indeed have refrained from creating, and continued 
alone, self-sufficient, and perfect to all eternity, but his infinite 
goodness would by no means allow it; this obliged him to 
produce external things, which things, since they could not 
possibly be perfect, the Divine Goodness preferred imperfect 
ones to none at all. Imperfection then arose from the infin- 
ity of divine goodness." — (p. 119). "If you say, God might 
have omitted the more imperfect beings, I grant it, and if that 
had been best he would undoubtedly have done it. But it 
is the part of infinite goodness to choose the very best; from 
thence proceeds, therefore, that the more imperfect beings 
have existence; for it was agreeable to that, not to omit the very 
least good that could be produced. Finite goodness might pos- 
sibly have been exhausted in creating the greater beings, but in- 
finite extends to all. The infinite power and goodness of God 
then were the causes why imperfect beings had existence 
together with the more perfect."-— (p. 141, 142). This resembles 
the better judgment of St. Augustine, which taught him that the 
higher and lower of created things are better altogether than the 
higher by themselves. 

Section 10. — It is the general faith throughout Christendom, 
or it has been until very recently, that pain and death came into 
the world as the penalty of Adam's transgression. On this view 
it is supposed that notwithstanding the presence and omnipo- 
tence of God, man is responsible for the physical, as well as for 
the moral evil in the world. Science, has, however, thrown diffi- 
culties in the way of this view by showing that pain and death 
existed on earth long anterior to the advent of man. Writers, 
who, at the same time, have been theologians and scientists, 
have not shrunk from grappling with this difficulty. As a sample 
of this kind of work, we may instance the Religion of Geology by 
Rev. Edward Hitchcock, president of Amherst college and geol- 
ogist to the State of Massachusetts. He goes on to state that 
God, having intended to create man, and foreseeing his fall, must 



Sec. II.] THE CONTRARIES. 1 5 

needs so order creation as to adapt it to man's fallen condition 
and thus secure the harmony of the whole. "Death 5 therefore, 
entered into the original plan of the world in the Divine mind, 
and was endured by the animals and plants that lived anterior 
to man. Yet, as the constitution of the world is, doubtless, very 
different from what it would have been if sin had not existed in 
it, and as man alone was capable of sin, it is proper to regard 
man's transgression as the occasion of all the suffering and death 
that existed on the globe since its creation." — (p. 204). All the 
creatures which had existed on the earth during the geological 
ages for millions of years before the creation of man, were made 
to suffer and die, because Adam, when he should come, would 
eat of the forbidden fruit 

Independently, and in theological despair, perhaps, M. Secre- 
tin has put forth the same view of this difficult problem. — (Gold- 
win Smith.) While the logic is desperate and doing its utmost to 
put a cheerful face on things, it fails, since it concedes by impli- 
cation that there is a gloomy and inexorable fatality which occa- 
sioned things to be as they are with all their ills. 

Section ii. — A quaint little work entitled "Rambles with a 
Philosopher," written at the antipodes, and published at Duneden, 
New Zealand, in 1867, is devoted to an exposition of the "Rule 
of Contraries." Its illustrations from science are sometimes apt, 
sometimes fanciful. A few extracts will give the author's leading 
idea: "The rule of contraries is as little to be ignored by the 
moderns as by the ancients, . . , In it all things cir- 
culate, all things exist and have a being. This is true with 
regard to creation, organic and inorganic. Without the con- 
traries what would the world be but chaos?" "Reaction is the 
soul of nature." "Nature in opposition is life." "Man thus to 
exist, is to be a mixture of contraries; the law of nature is not 
to be gainsaid." "With the creation of the world entered the 
establishment of opposite principles." "Every thing to exist must 
have two opposites." The author, of course, makes a hobby 
of contraries; and his applications of the doctrine are apt to be 
puerile, as when he makes his philosopher affirm of the " vaunted 



id MODERN CONCEPTIONS. [Chap. II. 

American Republic," that while it retains its four millions of 
slaves to balance its four millions of voters, it will stand; but 
that when slavery is abolished, physical force running rampant, 
will destroy intelligence, put an end to the constitution, and 
"break the nation in pieces," when "four great nations will 
spring out of the debris "(!). The author makes no use of his 
doctrines to unlock the mystery of good and evil. 

Dr. Moore, the author of works on psychological subjects 
published in England and in this country, declares that "Crea- 
tion is a system of antagonisms. There are opposing forces 
both in the spiritual and physical world, and it is only in the 
diagonal between them that nature maintains her standing." 
"Man is the grand contradiction — a compound of paradoxes ; 
for he is constituted not only of opposites but of contraries." 
He further recognizes the doctrine that pleasure and pain are 
inevitably bound up together, being different degrees of the 
same thing, and the one necessary to the existence of the other. 
All this is but the revival of very old doctrines which even the 
most pronounced optimists could not overlook. 

The author of "The Rise and the Fall" says: "Thus it 
appears that when the Creator, having organized the inanimate 
universe with its method of forces and counter-forces, and 
formed the lower orders of animals, grade after grade, under the 
like system of impulses and checks in their subjective and 
objective conditions of being, came to create man, he constituted 
him upon no new principles, but both in his bodily structure 
and in his psychological system, in pursuance of this uniform 
and well-considered plan." — (p. 29). 

The optimist, Bolingbroke, finds that the world's beauty is 
founded on contraries, and universal concord on the mutual 
opposition of principles and things. And according to William 
Blake, "Without contraries there is no progression. Attraction 
and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary 
to human existence. From these contraries spring what the 
religious call good and evil. Good is the passive and obeys rea- 
son, evil is the active springing from energy. Good is heaven — 



SeC. II.] NECESSARY EVIL. 1 7 

evil is hell." — (Marriage of Heaven and Hell). Goethe observed 
"that every action implies an opposite. Inhalation precedes 
expiration, and each systole has its corresponding diastole. Such 
is the eternal formula of life." — ("Farbenlehre," reported by Tyn- 
dall). And Tyndall, in a different connection, states it as fol- 
lows : " A magnet attracts iron, but, when we analyze the 
effect, we learn that the metal is not only attracted but repelled, 
the final approach to the magnet being due to the difference of 
two unequal and opposing forces. Social progress is, for the 
most part, typified by this duplex or polar action. As a general 
rule every advance is balanced by a partial retreat, every amel- 
ioration is associated more or less with deterioration. No great 
mechanical improvement, for example, is introduced for the 
benefit of society at large that does not bear hardly upon indi- 
viduals. Science, like other things, is subject to the operation 
of this polar law, what is good for it under one aspect being bad 
for it under another." 

A very recent writer says: "They judge wrongly who think that 
the evils of civilized society, such as misery, disease, prostitution, 
madness, suicide, are accidental and avoidable, but to those who 
look at things from the positive side, it appears clear that they 
are the effects of the same law of evolution to which all living 
beings are subject, and the aim of which is the well-being of 
animals, and for man that state of moral and physical perfection 
unconsciously desired by nature, and which metaphysicians 
define as the future happiness of the individual. These social 
evils represent the inevitable result of the struggle for exist- 
ence." — (Morselli, Suicide, 361). Evils follow like dismal 
shadows along the pathway of evolving good, and the latter can- 
not be had without the former, a proposition which following 
chapters may do something to elucidate. *— - * 

According to Hume there are four causes of evil in the world : 
The employment of pains and pleasures to excite creatures to 
action; the conducting of the world by general laws; the econ- 
omy of means in the production of results ; and defect of oper- 
ation in the great machine of nature. Before Paley, he wrote 



1 8 MODERN CONCEPTIONS. \Chdp. II. 

that, in consequence of general laws and susceptibility to pain, 
" It scarcely seems possible but some ill must arise in the vari- 
ous shocks of matter and the various concurrence and opposition 
of general laws." He insists that nature is a congeries of parts 
which are liable to run into excess of action and fill the world with 
discord. " The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind 
nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring 
forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her 
maimed and abortive children." — (Natural Religion.) 

The optimist, Erasmus Darwin, is compelled to recognize the 
war in nature, exclaiming : " Such is the condition of the order 
of nature, whose first law might be expressed in the words, 
■ Eat, or be eaten,' and which would seem to be one great 
slaughter-house, one universal scene of rapacity and injustice ! " 
Frederick Harrison has beautifully stated the grim facts as fol- 
lows : " The world is not all radiant and harmonious ; it is often 
savage and chaotic. In thought we can see only the bright, 
but in the hard fact we are brought face to face with the dark 
side. Waste, ruin, conflict, rot, are about us everywhere. If 
tornadoes, earthquakes, glacier epochs are not very frequent, 
there is everywhere decay, dissolution, waste, every hour and in 
every part of the vast cosmos. See nature at its richest on the 
slopes of some Andes or Himalaya, where a first glance shows 
us one vision of delight and peace. We gaze more steadily, we 
see how animal, and vegetable, and inorganic life are at war, 
tearing each the other ; every leaf holds its destructive insect, 
every tree is a scene of torture, combat, death ; everything preys 
on everything; animals, storms, suns, and snows waste the flower 
and the herb ; climate tortures to death the living world, and 
the inanimate world is wasted by the animate, or by its own 
pent up forces." — (Nineteenth Century, August, 1881.) 

Section 12. — In "Gravenhurst; or Thoughts on Good and 
Evil," Mr. William Smith gives his solution of the vexed prob- 
lem on the stoical principle that, " What we call evil is only a 
condition of what is called good, and necessary to our concep- 
tions of good as well as to its actual existence; but that without 



Sec. rj.] evils of life. 19 

which good cannot be, is not evil, therefore there is no evil." 
Westminster Review, Jan., 1865.) This is but the repetition of 
Plato, and more particularly of Marcus Aurelius and other stoics. 
It calls in the aid of a quibble and gets rid of evil by ignoring it. 
That evil is in some way necessary to good is no uncommon view 
of the subject. A modern optimist writes: "That unknown 
God has ordained that mankind should be elevated by misfor- 
tune, and that happiness should grow out of misery and pain. 
I give to universal history a strange but true title — The Martyr- 
dom of Man. In each generation the human race has been 
tortured that their children might profit by their woes. Our 
own prosperity is founded on the agonies of the past. Is it, 
therefore, unjust that we also should suffer for the benefit of 
those who are to come?" — (Martyrdom of Man. W. Reade.) 
So often what philosophy has taught, the muse has sung: 

"God draws a cloud over each gleaming morn, — 

Would you ask why ? 
It is because all noblest things are born 

In agony. 
Only upon some cross of pain and woe 

God's Son may lie : 
Each soul redeemed from self and sin, must know 

Its Calvary. — Frances Power Cobbe. 

Section 13. — Very many who have left a record of their feel- 
ings appear to have despaired concerning the happiness to be 
enjoyed in life. The first witness we summon is Burton: "If 
we could foretell what was to come, and put it to our choice, 
we should rather refuse than accept of this painful life. In a 
word, the world itself is a maze, a labyrinth of errors, a desert, 
or wilderness, or den of thieves, cheaters, etc., full of filthy 
puddles, horrid rocks, precipitums, an ocean of adversity, an 
heavy yoke; wherein infirmities and calamities overtake and 
follow one another, as the sea waves; and if we 'scape Scylla 
we fall foul on Charybdis, and so in perpetual fear, labor, 
anguish, we run from one plague, one mischief, one burden to 
another, and you may as soon separate weight from lead, heat 
from fire, moisture from water, brightness from the sun, as 



20 MODERN CONCEPTIONS. \Chap. IL 

misery, discontent, care, calamity, danger, from man." Dr. 
Samuel Johnson declared that, in the present, man is never 
happy but when he is drunk; that is, only when in his delirium 
he is able to forget himself. He would not admit that he was 
himself happy. Rousseau testifies: "Souffrir est la premiere 
chose qu'il doit apprendre, et celle qu'il aura le plus grand 
besoin de savoir." "La felicite de l'homme ici-bas n'est done 
qu'un etat negatif; on doit la mesurer par le moindre quantite 
des maux qu'il souffre." Bayle: "Que l'homme est mechant 
et malheureux; qu'il y a partout des prisons et des hopitaux ; 
que l'histoire n'est qu'un recueil des crimes et des infortunes de 
genre humain." Sainte Beuve: "As soon as you penetrate a 
little under the veil of society, as in nature, you see nothing 
but wars, struggles, destructions, and recompositions." Carlyle: 
"Thus already Freewill often came in painful collision with 
Necessity, so that my tears flowed, and at seasons the child 
itself might taste that root of bitterness wherewith the whole 
fruitage of our life is mingled and tempered." Mandeville: 
"There is nothing good in all the universe to the best designing 
man, if either through mistake or ignorance he commits the 
least failing in the use of it; there is no innocence or integrity 
that can protect a man from a thousand mischiefs that surround 
him; on the contrary everything is evil which art and experi- 
ence have not taught us to turn into a blessing." 

In every conceit of thought and phase of feeling is the ancient 
world paralleled in the more modern. Lessing wondered at 
the foresight and good sense of his son, who on the day of his 
birth, had to be brought into the world by force, and was no 
sooner in it than he made haste to get out of it. Spenser sings 
in mournful strain : 

"They crying creep out of their mother's womb, . 
So wailing back go to their woeful tomb." 

And Prior : 

" Who breathes must suffer, and who thinks must mourn, 
And he alone is blest, who ne'er was born." 



SeC. 14.] WAIL OF THE POETS. 21 

Section 14. — Poets may be quite generally visionary, and 
perhaps optimistic, but they are apt to sing in sad refrain. We 
may go to them for the wails of wrung hearts. The following 
from Byron appears to be pessimistic in spirit on a base of optim- 
istic philosophy : 

" Our life is a false nature: 'tis not in 
The harmony of things, — this hard decree, 
This ineradicable taint of sin, 
This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree, 
Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be, 
The skies, which rain their plagues o'er men like dew — 
Disease, death, bondage, — all the woes we see, 
And worse, the woes we see not — which throb through 
The immedicable soul, with heartaches ever new." 



Shelly exclaims : 



What is the world's delight ? 
Lightning that mocks the night, 
Brief even as bright." 



And again : 



' ' We look before and after 
And pine for what is not; 
Our sincerest laughter 

With some pain is fraught, 
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. 1 



Cowper : 



'Ask what is human life — the sage replies, 
With disappointment low'ringin his eyes, 
A painful passage o'er a restless flood : 
A vain pursuit of fugitive false good ; 
A scene of fancied bliss and heartfelt care, 
Closing at last in darkness and despair." 



Young : 



"There's not a day, but to the man of thought, 
Betrays some secret that throws new reproach 
On life, and makes us sick of seeing more." 

Campbell : 

"Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, 
Count o'er thy days from anguish free, 
And know, whatever thou hast been 
'Tis something better not to be." 



2 2 pessimism. [Chap. III. 

Dryden : 

"When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat; 
Yet fooled with hope, men favor the deceit; 
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay : 
To-morrow's falser than the former day." 

And we may close with the mournful and mocking words of 
Voltaire : 

" Ainsi du monde entier tous les membres gemissent: 
Nes tous pour les tourments, l'un par l'autre, ils perissent: 
Et vous composerez dans ce chaos fatal 
Des malheurs de chaque etre un bonheur general!" 



CHAPTER III. 

PESSIMISM. 



Section 15. — Pessimism may be regarded as of two kinds, 
emotional and intellectual, and the two are not necessarily con- 
joined in the same mind. Some of the most pessimistic passages 
to be found in literature have been written, no doubt, by intellect- 
ual optimists; on the other hand, some pessimists by principle 
appear not to be pessimistic in feeling. This chapter has refer- 
ence to systematic pessimism, that which has been intellectually 
elaborated and stoutly maintained as a great truth in philosophy. 
This has had its principal development in Germany. Schopen- 
hauer may be regarded as the prince of pessimists. He con- 
ceived of the world as will and idea, or conception ( Vorstellung). 
What appears to our senses as matter, as force, is will. He 
insists that by resolving force into will the problem is great- 
ly simplified, since our acquaintance with will is intimate, per- 
sonal, direct. This view of existence as will affords to Shopen- 
hauer the basis of his doctrine, that pain greatly predominates in 
life. Will is a constant strife, and this strife is painful. He 



SeC, l6.~\ SCHOPENHAUER AND HARTMANN. 23 

sees only pain in desiring, wishing, which are but forms of willing, 
while the pleasure of gratification is so brief as to bear no com- 
parison with the antecedent pain. All pleasure then is the 
deliverance from pain, and is consequently negative, while pain is 
positive. Upon this theory mankind live constantly below the 
emotional zero, — that point in feeling where it may be supposed 
the equal weight of pleasure and pain balance each other. Schop- 
enhauer adopts the precise opposite of Leibnitz's view of the 
universe, and maintains that ours is the worst possible world, 
it being as bad as it can be and exist at all. Yet he contends 
that all we seem to gain by development is loss, and that the 
condition of things is becoming constantly worse instead of 
better. He sees no remedy for this deplorable state of things, 
but in abnegating the activities of existence, not by self-destruc- 
tion, but by stilling the will, crucifying all desire, and crushing 
out all interest in life. 

Section 16. — Hartmann, who is in some sence Schopenhauer's 
disciple, does not go so far. He does not believe that all 
pleasure is negative and all pain positive; for, though such is 
largely the case, he admits that there are sources of positive 
enjoyment — gratifications which are not necessarily coupled with 
any form of suffering. He instances as such the mental activ- 
ities concerned in cultivating art and science. While he rejects 
Leibnitz's views of the privative character of evil and its ultimate 
extinction in a millennial future, he accepts his theory of " the 
best possible world." The evil so far transcends the good that 
it is a very bad world, but it is, nevertheless, the best possible. 
It is the best because it is the production of the Unconscious 
All-One which never errs (unless it possibly did so when by a 
" blind impulse of the will," it brought this bad world into 
existence). Still, it is the best possible because it is capable of 
being eventually annihilated ! It is with reference to the excess 
of evil over good in existence and the desirableness of its extinc- 
tion, that Hartmann has framed his curious and weak but brilliant 
speculative system, the " Philosophy of the Unconscious." 

Hartmann maintains that if we have a universe at all, it must 



24 pessimism. [Chap. Ill, 

be one in which there is more evil than good, more misery than 
happiness. There cannot be individualization without a whole 
train of attendant evils. There cannot be individualization 
without egoism, the preservation of self, involving conflict and 
the general crossing of purposes, with consequent injustice, 
cruelty, immorality, etc. He avers that since health, youth, 
freedom from anxiety, which constitute the greatest good, and 
contentment which constitutes the greatest happiness, do not sus- 
tain us above the emotional zero, therefore is the best possible 
form of existence worse than no existence at all. He declares 
that if mankind could wholly escape disease, could procure 
food from inorganic matter, and could secure all the pleasures of 
love without transcending the means of subsistence, nevertheless 
would all these acquisitions only palliate the worst of existing 
evils, and the sum of misery would still be greater than that of 
happiness. He is bound not to be pleased with life. 

Section 17. — Hartmann finds four reasons why it is a priori 
impossible to create a world in which the pleasure shall outweigh 
the pain. 1. The lassitude and pain which follow when the 
pleasure of nervous excitement ceases; for nervous exhaustion 
increases the struggle against pain and weakens the power to 
retain pleasure, thus adding to pain and detracting from pleasure. 

2. The indirect character of all pleasure, which consists in 
release from pain, this constituting most of the pleasures we enjoy. 

3. The brief term of gratification, which is little more than a 
moment compared with the persistent presence of ungratified 
feeling which is commensurate with volition and desire, and for 
which there is only the palliation of hope, and the relief which 
gratification affords. 4. The greater facility of pain (than of 
pleasure), by its very nature, to come into consciousness. Else- 
where this is amplified by the statement that equal quantities of 
pleasure and pain united in consciousness are not of equal value- 
they do not offset each other — the pain outweighs; and the 
exclusion of all sensation would be preferable to such union of 
pleasure and pain. 

We cannot regard this metaphysical method of treating the 



Sec. i£.] hartmann's views. 25 

subject as at all satisfactory. The operation of weighing pleas- 
ures and pains against each other, we take to be very much 
wanting in precision. In things so unlike, it is impossible to 
say how much of one is equal to so much of the other. Beside, 
there is no uniformity of standard for testing the relation. No two 
scales would show the same result. A Mill and a Schopenhauer, 
would measure life with standards so different that their results 
would not be comparable. The one has it that the balance of 
happiness over pain in life may be considerable; the other holds 
that any suffering at all in the world would overbalance all possi- 
ble happiness, and make it a pessimistic world. Our estimate of 
the relative weight of pleasures and pains is very largely an affair 
of temperament, of sympathy, of mood, of health. Some 
natures of very elastic constitution will be happy any way, while 
others who are morbidly sensitive are bound to be miserable. 
Even the same individual in different moods would not make 
the same estimate of the relative proportions of suffering and 
enjoyment in life. Hence, although it will be necessary to speak 
of the relative proportions of pleasures and pains as if they were 
measurable, it must be with the understanding that this whole 
subject is one which is greatly wanting in precision. 

Section 18. — Hartmann insists that most of the pleasures of 
life are not real but illusory. He measures happiness by the 
quality of its cause, and seems to think that there is a difference 
between the reality of happiness and the feeling of happiness. 
But we submit that if a man is happy, he is happy, whether 
the cause of it be some illusory hope, or the acquisition of 
something having what is called substantial value. Mankind 
have no doubt in all times past found most of their happiness in 
cherishing the manifold forms of delusion. The less they have 
been blessed the more they believed they would be blessed. 
Hartmann finds three stages of illusion among mankind; the 
first is the hope of securing happiness in this life. Under this 
head he examines the claims of the appetites and emotions, and 
their results in life, love, and the family, fame, religion, etc., and 
finding that they are all fraught with an excess of misery, he con- 



26 pessimism. \Chap. Ill, 

eludes that the most to be hoped for is the least possible 
unhappiness. The second form of illusion is that which looks to 
a future life for happiness ; and the third that which places it 
in some future period of existence on earth. But instead of 
becoming happier by what we call progress, as many fondly imag- 
ine, mankind are becoming more and more unhappy. Rousseau 
would go back to primitive life for relief from the abominations 
of civilization ; Hartmann would not stop there, — he insists on 
going back to a point beyond the very beginning of existence to 
get rid of the misery of existence. 

He presents an eloquent and gloomy picture of the old age 
of the world when all the illusions have been outlived; when 
the last hope has died, and all that ever seemed to be desir- 
able is in the past : when it is thus realized that there is 
nothing more to look forward to, and decrepit humanity hob- 
bles along from day to day, knowing that the most to be 
expected is a diminution of suffering, and longing for nothing 
so much as quiet, peace, eternal sleep. Having exhausted every 
hope and every effort for happiness, having realized to the utter- 
most the folly of existence, the only thing left to contemplate as 
desirable in destiny is the painlessness of utter extinction, the 
Nirwana ! 

Hartmann does not treat the question of good and evil in its 
physical, but only in its mental, relations. — (Philosophie des 
Unbewussten, XL, XII.). 

Section 19. — There are pessimists who frame theories, but act 
precisely as if their theories had no relation to conduct. Hart- 
mann is a married man and may leave successors to suffer the 
pangs of existence. Alexander Von Humboldt framed no pes- 
simistic theories — he was too busy with science; but he governed 
his life in a weighty matter by pessimistic considerations. Hear 
him : " I was not born in order to be the father of a family. 
Moreover, I regard marriage as a sin, and the propagation of 
children as a crime. It is my conviction also that he is a fool, 
and still more a sinner, who takes upon himself the yoke of 
marriage — a fool, because he thereby throws away his freedom, 



Sec. 20.] humboldt's wail." 27 

without gaining a corresponding recompense; a sinner, because 
he gives life to children, without being able to give them the 
certainty of happiness. I despise humanity in all its strata; I 
foresee that our posterity will be far more unhappy than we are; 
and should not I be a sinner, if, in spite of this insight, I should 
take care to leave a posterity of unhappy beings after me ? The 
whole of life is the greatest insanity. And if for eighty years 
one strives and inquires, still one is obliged finally to confess that 
he has striven for nothing. Did we at last only know why we 
are in this world ! But to the thinker, everything is a romance 
and riddle, and the greatest good luck is that of being born a 
flathead." — (Quoted by Dr. Bowen in North American Review, 
November, 1879). 

It must be admitted that this is eloquent and direct. It comes 
from a man of large experience, and if it be regarded as having 
weight, we may conclude in the spirit of the wail itself, that such 
views and feelings concerning life are only too apt to be the 
scourge of intellect; and one of the conditions of the " good 
time coming " is said to be the enlargement and enlightenment 
of intellect — a conflict of authorities with which we are not here 
properly concerned. The wail of the great scientist may be 
properly supplemented by that of the great satirist, Swift, who 
celebrated his birthday as a day of mourning : " Although 
reason were intended by Providence to govern our passions, yet 
it seems that in two points of the greatest moment to the being 
and continuance of the world, God has intended our passions 
to prevail over reason. The first is the propagation of our 
species, since no wise man ever married from the dictates of 
reason. The other is the love of life, which from the dictates of 
reason every man would despise, and wish it at an end, or that 
it never had a beginning." 

Section 20. — The melancholy view of life morbidly dwelt on 
appears to be in some sort a disease of civilization. It prevailed 
in ancient Greece and Rome, and it no doubt helped stoicism to 
its general acceptance in the Roman world, and furnished to 
Christianity the soil in which its characteristic contempt for the 



28 pessimism. [Chap. III. 

flesh and the world took root and grew. In our own times 
pessimism is not confined to Germany by any means. Its 
" black hosts " are advancing into other countries, and pitching 
their tents as usual in the very centers of civilization. Where 
there is most enlightenment there appears to be most pessimism. 
English-speaking peoples are not apt to be demonstrative with 
heretical views; and if any had embraced the pessimistic tenets, 
they would be less apt, perhaps, than some others, to push them 
openly on their inherent merits. It is safer to state offensive doc- 
trines in the interest of more grateful views. This is especially 
well illustrated in the writings of Mr. Mallock, in which, how- 
ever, there is much heroic assertion and not a great deal of judi- 
cial thinking. His thoroughgoing pessimism is put forward as 
a basis on which to push the claims of an authoritative religion. 
He declares: "Nature, as positive observation reveals her to 
us, is a thing that can have no claim either on our reverence or 
our approbation. Once apply any moral test to her con- 
duct, as J. S. Mill has so forcibly pointed out, she becomes a 
monster. There is no crime that men abhor or perpetrate that 
nature does not commit daily on an exaggerated scale. She 
knows no sense, either of justice or mercy. Continually, indeed, 
she seems to be tender, and loving, and bountiful ; but all that, 
at such times, those that know her can exclaim to her, is 

' Miseri quibus 
Intentata nites.' 

"At one moment she will be blessing a country with plenty, 
peace, and sunshine, and she will the next moment ruin the 
whole of it by an earthquake. Now she is the image of thrift, 
now of prodigality ; now of the utmost purity, now of the most 
revolting filth, and if, as I say, she is to be judged by any moral 
standard at all, her capacities for what is admirable not only 
make her crimes the darker, but they also make her virtues par- 
take of the nature of sin. How, then, can an intimacy with 
this eternal criminal be an ennobling or a sacred thing?" — (Is 
Life Worth Living). 

What then makes life worth the living? Revealed religion. 



Sec. 20.] MALLOCK AND CAMPBELL. 29 

This conjunction of a bad system of nature with a good scheme 
of redemption is not new. Mr. Mallock himself says: "The 
emptiness of the things of this life, the incompleteness of even 
its highest pleasures, and their utter powerlessness to make us 
really happy, has been at least for fifteen hundred years a com- 
monplace, both with saints and sages. The conception that 
anything in this life could of itself be of any moment to us, 
was considered as much a puerility unworthy of a man of the 
world, as a disloyalty to God." 

Dr. Alexander Campbell, the founder of Bethany college and 
of a sect in this country, opposed natural theology on something 
very like pessimistic grounds. The blighting frost served his 
end as the earthquake does Mallock's. Goldwin Smith believes 
that, "Upon the materialist hypothesis of life the pessimist has 
the best of the argument; and the effect of his unsparing scru- 
tiny will soon appear." He declares that pessimism has the best 
of it, if there be no life beyond. It is not improbable that with 
the conquests of science, the prevalence of "hard-headed" meth- 
ods, the spread of knowledge, and the intensities of civilization, 
there may be going on a pronounced reaction from optimism 
toward pessimism, which will be seized upon by certain influ- 
ential orders to advance the interests of ecclesiasticism, as 
affording the only panacea for the infirmities of our common 
nature. 



CHAPTER IV. 

OPTIMISM PERFECTION AND THE GOLDEN AGES. 

Section 21. — The optimist is one who takes a cheerful view 
of the possibilities of life, and believes in the positive and pre- 
vailing character of good and the negative and incidental nature 
of evil. An extreme form of optimism is, that by means of con- 
tinuous progress or providential interference, all evil will finally 
disappear, earth will become a paradise, and life thereon elysian. 
This is both retrospective and prospective. There was once a 
time in contrast with the present when men were happy, and 
there will be such a time again. Nothing is more natural than 
the origin of such visions. The abject concern themselves in 
imagination with pomp and power, the indigent with heaps of 
gold, the hungry dream of feasts. There is always so much in 
the present to baffle and defeat, that the thoughts by way of 
compensation revert to a happier period in the past, "the good 
old times," or "the golden age," or they reach into the future 
when discord will end and paradise will be restored. This 
poverty of life, which will be rich in imaginary treasures, very 
generally refers the period of fruition to a future state of existence; 
but at the same time almost all peoples and religions have such 
a period in store for the future of life on earth. 

Section 22. — The Chinese are taught in their sacred writings 
that there was in the beginning an age of purity, harmony, 
rationality, justice, and unalloyed happiness. Confucius prophe- 
sied a future golden age for the Chinese empire when it should 
cover the whole earth, and under the auspices of a divine man 
secure universal happiness for mankind. The Brahmins, Buddh- 
ists, all who derived their speculative ideas from the Hindoos, 



SeC. 22. \ PARADISIACAL DREAMS. 31 

believe in a golden age past and another to come. The Per- 
sians look forward to a glorious time when even Ahrimanes and 
his imps will all become lovers of good, and mankind, rejoicing 
in peace and harmony and in the ecstacy of every innocent 
delight, will not even cast shadows on the earth, now renovated 
into physical perfection. 

So ancient a Greek as Hesiod mourned the degeneracy of his 
times, and looked back to the reign of Saturn as the golden age 
of the world, when men lived like the gods, and with the gods, 
and were happy. Even Plato had his golden ages, one past, the 
other to come. He adopts Hesiod's idea of the age of Saturn, 
giving it, however, the Platonic coloring. God was then the 
Prince and common father of all, and governed the world in per- 
son, and not as now by inferior deities. The products of the earth 
were spontaneous, and the climate was so genial that people had 
no need of clothing. They reclined on beds of moss perpet- 
ually verdant, and were so mildly tempered that violence and 
cruelty were unknown. And only think of the contrast with all 
the historical period : there were neither magistrates, nor any 
civil policy, for all men were governed by reason and the love of 
order ! 

The Jews had their paradise at the beginning, and the end 
was to be equally happy, and more glorious still. There was to 
come a prince of the royal line of David, and he would bring 
together from among the nations the dispersed fragments of the 
chosen people, and summon from the dead all worthy Jews to 
be united with the living on a purified earth; and to reign with 
Him in bliss and glory for a thousand years. The Jews had 
suffered defeat and calamity, and had by no means been a 
righteous and happy people; they had incorporated into their 
system the Magian ideas of an evil principle in the world, and 
had given it anthropomorphic form as Satan, the chief of evil 
spirits, yet — it may be truly said, therefore — they dreamed of a 
millennium, as the destitute and hungry dream of plenty. The 
Jews were to be in paradise regained, and the hostile nations to 
be turned into hell. Even the Alexandrian Jews, with their 



32 optimism. [Chap. IV. 

advantages of Greek culture, though they modified the idea with 
a little leaven of rationality, expected, nevertheless, a miraculous 
deliverance and endless ages of peace and happiness on earth. 

The prevailing Christian view is but a modified transcript of 
that of the Jews. The elements are to melt with fervent heat, 
and there is to be a new heaven and a new earth, and Christ is 
to descend and reign with his saints for a thousand years. The 
prophecy of Isaiah is to be fulfilled, and ravenous beasts are to 
lose their ferocity, and poisonous serpents their venom. "They 
shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth 
shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover 
the sea." 

Section 23. — These ancient views are fully paralleled by 
those of modern times. What was held to be true under the 
notion of divine personal government, is still held to be true, 
though in a modified form, under the modern doctrine of 
natural law. And in periods when it was found that by the 
action of regular sequence, the course of things is obviously that 
of progress, still further modifications were made necessary by 
this new phase of intellectual experience. Even theologians 
have pressed the fact of progress into the service of their own 
peculiar views of future perfection. The following is an example: 
"The existence of a principle of progress in the creation being 
established, it is unwarrantable to suppose that its operation will 
cease until it has produced perfection. The fact that it is an 
established method of the divine procedure is evidence of its 
stability. We may announce it as an axiom that the will of God 
is realized only in the perfect. We have proved that the perfect 
in creation is attained by progress. The operation of the princi- 
ple, therefore, must continue until it has accomplished a perfect 
result. Such a result is not attained in the present constitution 
of things, hence we may confidently look for a further develop- 
ment of the divine plan." — (God Revealed in Creation and 
Christ, Rev. J. R. Walker, p. 126). 

Equally sanguine of man's future on earth is President Hitch- 
cock, referred to in a previous chapter (section 10). He presses 



Sec. 24.] scientific Utopias. 33 

geology into the service of theological optimism: "But we have 
reason to believe, from the Christian scriptures, that the next 
economy of life which shall be placed upon the globe will far 
transcend all those that have gone before. Every vestige of sin, 
suffering, decay, and death, will disappear. . . In short, 
the change is no other than the conversion of the world into 
Heaven/' — (Relig. Geol. p. 395). 

Section 24. — Equally as extreme and sanguine as the above 
are the views of certain scientists and scientific philosophers. 
We quote: "It will, I think, be admitted that of the evils under 
which we suffer nearly all may be attributed to ignorance or sin. 
That ignorance will be diminished by the progress of science is 
of course self-evident, that the same will be the case with sin, 
seems little less so. Thus, then, both theory and experience 
point to the same conclusion. The future happiness of our 
race, which poets hardly ventured to hope for, science boldly 
predicts. Utopia, which we have long looked upon as synony- 
mous with an evident impossibility, which we have ungratefully 
regarded as 'too good to be true,' turns out on the contrary to 
be the necessary consequence of natural laws, and once more 
we find that the simple truth exceeds the most brilliant flights of 
the imagination." — (Prehistoric Times, John Lubbock, pp. 491, 
492). This reminds one of Condorcet and Godwin; and it well 
illustrates the persistence of ideas to find a scientific writer with 
the advantages of modern research, and a practical scientist 
withal, so accurately reproducing Priestley's faith in a time com- 
ing which "will be glorious and paradisiacal beyond what our 
imaginations can conceive." 

The following is from one who has represented, and who still 
represents, a large and influential class of thinkers, sometimes 
designated as " hard-headed " : " In a world in which there is 
so much to interest, so much to enjoy, and also so much to cor- 
rect and improve, every one who has this moderate amount of 
moral and intellectual requisites is capable of an existence which 
may be called enviable. . . . No one whose 
opinion deserves a moment's consideration can doubt that most 



34 optimism. [Chap. IV. 

of the great positive evils of the world are in themselves remov- 
able, and will, if human affairs continue to improve, be in the 
end reduced within narrow limits. . . . All the 
grand sources, in short, of human suffering are in a great degree, 
many of them almost entirely, conquerable by human care and 
effort, etc." — (Utilitarianism, J. S. Mill, 21, 22). This is very 
careful, indeed, and can hardly be regarded as optimism ; it is 
rather meliorism with an optimistic bias. 

A more recent writer states the case with much less reserve : 
" Some believe only that a considerable number of human evils 
may be materially mitigated; others more buoyant have con- 
vinced themselves that with time, patience, and intelligent exer- 
tion, every evil not inherent in or essential to a finite existence, 
may be eliminated, and the yawning gulf between the actual and 
the ideal at last bridged over. This faith is mine. I hold it 
with a conviction which I feel for scarcely any other conclusion 
of the reason. ... I distinctly refuse to believe 
in inevitable evils." — (Enigmas of Life, W. R. Greg ). This is 
sufficiently optimistic ; but the writer's thoughts do not seem to 
have been well defined. If there are evils which are " inherent 
in or essential to finite existence," then there are " inevitable 
evils." But the writer does not believe in inevitable evils ; then, 
is his qualification, " inherent in or essential to finite existence," 
totally without significance? 

Whatever Herbert Spencer's present views, he has been an ex- 
treme optimist. He will himself state it : "Finally, all excess and 
all deficiency must disappear; that is, all unfitness must dis- 
appear ; that is, all imperfection must disappear," and at 
the close of a long sentence intended to warrant this climax, 
he affirms: "So surely must the human faculties be moulded 
into complete fitness for the social state; so surely must 
the things we call evil and immorality disappear; so surely must 
man become perfect." Again, "Then for the first time in the 
history of the world will there exist beings whose individualities 
can be expanded to the full in all directions, and thus as before 
said, in the ultimate man perfect morality, perfect individualiza- 



Sec. 24.] spencer's optimism. 35 

tion, and perfect life will be simultaneously realized." — (Social 
Statics, London, pp. 64, 65, 441). This idea of human perfection 
as a possible and attainable thing runs all through this early work 
of the author's; and the closing words of the first edition of his 
Psychology are in the same vein, when he speaks "of grand 
progression which is now bearing humanity onward to perfec- 
tion," — not toward, but to perfection. In First Principles (first 
Am. ed., p. 486; second ed., p. 5 1 7), speaking of the persistence of 
force, the author says: "After finding that from it are deducible 
the various characteristics of evolution, we finally draw from it a 
warrant for the belief that evolution can end only in the estab- 
lishment of the greatest perfection, and the most complete hap- 
piness." In justice to Mr. Spencer it must be observed that in 
the new edition of his Psychology (New York, vol. I., p. 503), he 
modifies the quotations we have given from the first edition to 
"that grand progress which is bearing humanity onwards to a 
higher intelligence and a nobler character," — a very significant 
change. Whatever may be the extent of change in Mr. Spencer's 
optimism, our quotations are still just, and fairly serve our pur- 
pose, inasmuch as they show how the prevailing Utopianism 
among liberal thinkers has involved so great a mind as his, and 
given color to his philosophy. 

Since the preceding was written Mr. Spencer has published 
his Data of Ethics. This work, it may be presumed, contains 
the author's matured views on the happiness question of "hu- 
manity on earth." It appears to be really as optimistic as his 
work on Social Statics, without the indulgence, however, of 
rhetorical flourishes in the optimistic vein. The cast of the future 
is somewhat more subdued in tone, and subjected to more 
thoughtful qualification, as in what is said, for example, of abso- 
lute and relative ethics. But this entire matter of "absolute 
ethics" appears to be an a priori figment of the artistic faculties, 
which, like all the Utopias, defies the stubborn fact of human 
nature. It is the beautiful creation of an amiable bias. ' Mr. 
Spencer still believes that mankind may become so thoroughly 
fitted to their situation, so completely harmonized with the con- 



36 optimism. [Chap. IK 

ditions of life on earth as to secure unmixed pleasure in all the 
emotional, mental, moral, and physical activities of being. If, 
as he believes, all pain is the result of wrong-doing, then with 
right-doing, which he believes to be possible, all pain would 
come to an end. This is abundantly optimistic. Nothing need 
be added here. Some of the points in the optimistic phases of 
Spencer's evolution-philosophy will be noticed in future chapters. 
Section 25. — There is a large class of people in this country 
known as Spiritualists, whose philosophy is distinctively "har- 
monial." The doctrine is confidently held that a state of per- 
fect harmony and happiness is possible in this life, and that it is 
to come about in accordance with law through the influence 
which the spirit world is able to exercise over humanity on earth. 
"There is nothing more positively certain than that the Har- 
monial Age will eventually dawn upon this rudimental world." 
"Therefore, when accomplished, unity will be the harmony of 
man with himself, with his neighbor, with the universe — or, with 
Father-God and Mother-Nature." — (Magic Staff, A. J. Davis, p. 
382, 383). The burthen of Mr. Davis' first work, his Divine 
Revelations of Nature, which is also the first philosophical pro- 
duct of the Spiritualistic school, is to define and establish the 
"Harmonial Philosophy," and the whole library of literature 
which has followed it from Spiritualistic writers, is in the same 
vein, and molded by the same purpose. Evil is regarded as 
privative, negative, incidental, as merely the friction of a divine 
(or natural) scheme of progress, which will carry mankind 
beyond the reach of all suffering into an earthly state of unal- 
loyed bliss. The orthodox millenium is to come through mir- 
acle by the direct action of the Supreme Ruler; the Spiritual- 
istic millennium is to come through natural law by the joint 
action of men and spirits. 

Section 26. — Another class, becoming constantly larger, and 
consisting of several schools, are the socialists and radicals. 
Upon the notions of none more than of these does the future 
peace or discord of society depend. Whatever the panacea they 
offer for the miseries of life, they acknowledge no inherent or 



SeC. 26.] SOCIALISTIC DREAMS. 37 

necessary evils. They may allow of some as pertaining to an 
undeveloped condition of the earth and man, but the cardinal 
idea is that perfect harmony and order exist in the natural con- 
stitution of things, and are destined sooner or later to be fully 
established on earth. I may quote from Mr. Brisbane's render- 
ing of Charles Fourier as an example: "First, that the reign 
of order, harmony, and happiness can be established on this 
earth ; secondly, that to attain this great end a true system of 
society must be discovered and organized in the place of the 
present false and incoherent systems ; thirdly, that the true 
system must be based upon the laws which govern creation, 
and which produce order and harmony in its various depart- 
ments. — (Social Destiny of Man, p. 52). 

The thought appears never once to be entertained that the 
present system has come about by the natural action of laws, 
to which man himself in all the departments of his being and 
relations is irrevocably subject, or that changes for the improve- 
ment of the future can only take place through the steady oper- 
ation of these laws. No, "the true system" is to be "discov- 
ered" and formally applied in accordance with imaginary laws 
to bring order and harmony out of anarchy and discord ! The 
stream is to be turned suddenly and made to run against the 
natural tendencies of gravity. Even Comte and his followers, 
positive in their methods as they claim to be, conceive as prac- 
tical a scientific and formal organization of society to take the 
place of the present system of unnatural disorder and anarchy. 

Most socialists would stoutly deny any faith in the Hebrew 
tradition about the fall of man and its dire consequences, which 
has served theology so well in accounting for the wickedness 
of mankind, but they all assume that somehow or other, society 
has become as completely disordered, as if every word concern- 
ing the fall was true. Wrong exists because somebody is doing 
wrong who might do right. The rulers of the earth do wrong ; 
the rich men of the world do wrong; the upper classes of society 
do wrong ; indeed, pretty much everybody is doing wrong ; and 
this is what makes all the injustice and suffering among man- 



38 optimism. [Chap. IV, 

kind. Socialists believe that they are able to specify what should 
be done in order that justice, plenty, peace, and happiness 
should prevail everywhere. Hence, the attitude is one of hos- 
tility to all these wrong-doers. They fully believe that if they 
could get into power, they would make such laws and establish 
such conditions of life that earth would speedily become a para- 
dise. The methods vary-; some think the change so desirable 
may be brought about by voluntary association or co-operative 
effort retaining individuality; others would merge the indi- 
vidual in the general mass, and by some sort of constituted 
authority appoint for each the place that will make him happy. 
It is to be paternalism and fraternity instead of individuality 
and free competition. Many look to the State as the power 
which should renovate society. Their optimism is complete, 
seeing none of the difficulties which lie in the way of its 
realization, — difficulties which exist in the very constitution 
of their own minds. While holding the ruling classes respon- 
sible for the poverty, want, and suffering which prevail, they 
forget that if they were in power they would be human too. 
The "Republics," "Utopias," and "Phalansteries" cannot be 
made real things for the same reason that Archimedes could not 
lift the world. 

Section 27. — It is not to be expected that a writer of Rous- 
seau's temperament shall be consistent. We have quoted him 
on the necessary relation of pain to pleasure. But in the same 
work he affirms the common optimistic notion that man is the 
cause of his own misery : " Le mal moral est incontestable- 
ment notre ouvrage, et le mal physique ne serait rien sans nos 
vices, qui nous l'ont rendre sensible." " Homme, ne cherche 
plus l'auteur du mal; cet auteur c'est toimeme. II n'existe point 
d'autre mal que celui que tu fais ou que tu souffres, et l'un, et 
l'autre te vient de toi. — (Emile, pp. 332-3.) 

Another writer whom we have quoted on necessary evil, gives 
expression in the same work to the wildest utopianism. He 
announces his faith in the " perfectibility of man," and expects 
marvelous results from science : " Disease will be extirpated; 



SeC, 2/.] VISIONARY EXTREMES. 39 

the cause of decay will be removed; immortality will be invented. 
And then the earth being small mankind will migrate into space 
and will cross the airless saharas which separate planet from 
planet, and sun from sun. The earth will become a holy land 
which will be visited by pilgrims from all quarters of the uni- 
verse. Finally, men will master the forces of nature; they will 
themselves become architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds. 
Man will then be perfect; he will be a creator; he will there- 
fore be what the vulgar worship as a God." — (Martyrdom of Man, 
514). All this is given with amplification; and it may be 
regarded as the " hyfalutin " of optimism. It really excels 
Charles Fourier's theory of the physical regeneration of earth, 
Von Prittwitz's transformation of earth into a universal park 
where people may migrate like birds to suit the season, and even 
Thomas Dick's idea of redeemed souls flying from world to 
world studying astronomy. But if Reade's be the extravagance 
of optimism, Hartley's is hardly less than the insanity of optimism 
in accepting the metaphysical delusion that " all individuals are 
actually and always infinitely happy." 

We quote an American writer: "The capabilities of art and 
science for making of earth a heaven will not be known, until 
pervading the masses, every child in the land will be tremulous 
with sensibility, and love of order and beauty. With the energy 
of thought peculiar to practical science and the sensibility 
attending art, every home will be the blessed abode of peace and 
plenty, of love, order, and beauty, in which sadness and sorrow 
will be unknown, as all will be industrious and live in natural 
simplicity, hardly ever visited by sickness, want, and misery." — 
(Race Education, Samuel Royce, pp. 183, 184). This is a char- 
acteristic passage. There is a like flaw here with that in the quo- 
tation from Greg (section 24). "Hardly," and the words which 
follow, betray an intellectual misgiving as to the previous confi- 
dent statement that "every home will be the blessed abode of 
peace and plenty, of love, order, and beauty, in which sadness 
and sorrow will be unknown." Emotional optimism may not 
wholly escape intellectual qualification. 



40 Optimism. [Chap. IV. 

Section 28. — Optimism as allied with progress and law had 
its origin during the last century, under the stimulus perhaps of 
commercial, industrial, social, and educational activities in 
western Europe. Having passed into literature, it became the 
common property of the intelligent, and through them it has 
permeated all classes, till, scarcely any of us have escaped its 
subtile influence as an educational force for the moulding of 
opinion. Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, Hutcheson, Godwin, Con- 
dorcet, were among its chief expositors. Pope set it to singing, 
and rendered it irresistible. 

Shaftesbury : "Tis good which is predominant ; and every cor- 
ruptible and mortal nature by its mortality and corruption yields 
only to some better, and all in common to that best and highest 
nature, which is incorruptible and immortal." — (Characteristics, 
Vol. II, p. 216). "All is delightful, amiable, rejoicing, except 
with relation to man only, and his circumstances, which seem 
unequal. Here the calamity of ill arises ; and hence the ruin 
of this goodly frame." — (p. 291). " That in an infinity of things, 
mutually relative, a mind which sees not infinitely, cm see 
nothing fully ; and must, therefore, frequently see that which is 
imperfect, which in itself is really perfect." The appearances of 
ill may be no real ill but good, and " all may be prefectly con- 
current to one interest; the interest of that Universal One." — 

(P- 364). 

- Condorcet : It can hardly be regarded as paradoxical that 
Condorcet should have written his extremely optimistic views 
during one of the gloomiest periods of modern times. Robes- 
pierre and his party were in power, and the Reign of Terror 
had driven Condorcet into concealment to escape the bloody 
tribunal which had been set up in the name of liberty. But 
nothing daunted he had his revenge by writing a hopeful view 
of the future — Tableau Historique des Progress de l'Esprit 
Humain. The author believes that there are no natural bounds 
set to the improvement of the human faculties, and that the 
perfectibility of man is really unlimited. Education properly 
directed would correct the prevailing inequality of the faculties, 



Sec. 28. ~\ CONDORCET AND GODWIN. 4 1 

and work all kinds of miracles in bringing about equality among 
men. He dreams of a universal language, and a universal 
equality, including equal rights between the sexes. As with 
fanatical optimism generally, he charges the evils to be found 
in marriage to its regulation by law ^£<" Ce sont les prejuges de 
la superstition et ceux de l'orgueil, ce sont les systems hypocrites 
et tyranniques des legislateurs, qui changent en poison funeste le 
plus sur aliment de notre felicite, le sentiment consolateur de 
nos maux inevitables." — (Euvres, Tome VI., 524). All of the 
Fragment de l'Histoire de la Xe Epoque assumes the possibility 
of converting human society into a paradise by making man- 
kind rational ; and teaches the methods of bringing this about, 
chief of which is to remodel human nature during the tender- 
ness of youth. Thus of teaching children : " C'est en leur 
inspirant l'habitude de transformer ce sentiment individuel de la 
compassion, en un sentiment general d'humanite, qu'on peut par- 
venir a. rendre la philanthropic une affection vraiment univer- 
selle." — (553). Generally, Condorcet regards the universal pro- 
gress of reason as the cure for all the wrongs of life; he expects 
all the passions to obey the injunctions of reason. In this way 
he gets rid of war, injustice, oppression, and every form of evil. 
He is in the habit of regarding evils which have grown out of 
the action of human nature as it is, as the consequence of bad 
institutions, forgetting that the institutions themselves are but 
the outgrowth of human nature acting as it must. 

Godwin: True to the type of radical reformers, William 
Godwin, author of "Enquiry Concerning Political Justice," is 
very often just in criticism, but generally wild in reconstruction 
and in anticipation. When he says that, "Legislation is in almost 
every country grossly the favorer of the rich against the poor," 
he does not greatly overstate the case, nor yet when he adds: 
" The rich are encouraged to associate for the execution of the 
most partial and oppressive positive laws. Monopolies and 
patents are lavishly dispensed to such as are able to purchase 
them." — (pp. 29, 40). It was quite true then ; it is quite true 
yet, as has been munificently and magnificently proved in our 



42 optimism. \Chap. IV. 

own country during the last twenty years. But when our author 
looks forward to what is to be, he readily goes off into extrava- 
gance: "How rapid and sublime would be the advances of 
intellect, if all men were admitted into the field of knowledge? 
At present ninety-nine persons in a hundred are no more excited 
to any regular exercise of general and curious thought, than the 
brutes themselves. What would be the state of public mind in a 
nation where all were wise, all had laid aside the shackles of 
prejudice and implicit faith, all had adopted with fearless confi- 
dence the suggestions of truth, and the lethargy of the soul was 
dismissed forever?" — (p. 807). And still more in the same 
strain. 

"The spirit of oppression, the spirit of servility, and the spirit 
of fraud, these are the immediate growth of the established 
system of property. These are alike hostile to intellectual and 
moral improvement. The other vices of envy, malice, and 
revenge are their inseparable companions. In a state of society 
where man lived in the midst of plenty, and where all shared 
alike the bounties of nature, these sentiments would inevitably 
expire. The narrow principle of selfishness would vanish. No 
man being obliged to guard his little store, or to provide with 
anxiety and pain for his restless wants, each would lose his own 
individual existence in the thought of the general good. No 
man would be an enemy to his neighbor, for they would have 
nothing for which to contend, and of consequence philanthropy 
would resume the empire which reason assigns her. Mind 
would be delivered from her perpetual anxiety about corporal 
support, and free to expatiate in the field of thought which is 
congenial to her. Each man would assist the inquiries of all." 
-(p. 810). 

The author does not believe in co-operation, common labor, or 
meals in common, and is quite a stickler for individuality. He 
affirms that, "Sleep is one of the most conspicuous infirmities 
of the human frame," and believes it may be done away with. — 
(p. 868.) Eventually mankind will refuse to propagate and will 
become immortal on earth, "and men, therefore, to exist when 



SeC. 28."] APT TO BE FANATICAL. 43 

the earth shall refuse itself to a more extended population, will 
cease to propagate, for they will no longer have any motive, 
either of error or duty, to induce them. In addition to this 
they will perhaps be immortal. The whole will be a people of men 
and not of children. Generation will not succeed generation, 
nor truth have in a certain degree to recommence her career at 
the end of every thirty years. There will be no war, no crimes, 
no administration of justice, as it is called, and no government. 
These latter articles are at no great distance; and it is not im- 
possible that some of the present race of men may live to see 
them accomplished. But besides this there will be no disease, 
no anguish, no melancholy, no resentment. Every man will 
seek with inevitable ardor the good of all." — (p. 872.) And thus 
he goes on with "this illustrious picture." Proper education, no 
accumulation of property, but perfect equality of possession, 
and a fine sense of justice are to bring about this millennium. 
The type of optimistic faith exemplified in the doctrine of Con- 
dorcet and Godwin is still that which, though it affords a no- 
ble incentive to endeavor, is almost sure to be coupled with 
fanaticism. 

Pope: "All nature is but art, unknown to thee; 

All chance direction which thou canst not see; 

All discord, harmony not understood; 

All partial evil, universal good; 

And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, 

One truth is clear, whatever is, is right." 

Thus has optimism in its extreme form of perfect, or very 
nearly perfect bliss, either now, or to be in time to come, found 
lodgment in the minds of representative writers, sentimentalists, 
poets, theologians, spiritualists, socialists, even hard-headed 
thinkers and scientists. Such is the diversity of changes, which 
have been rung on this conception, that it has been difficult to 
find any principle to guide in the collocation of views given in 
this chapter. Fashions of opinions are not always correct; and 
this may not be. It seems to be rather the crude result of intel- 
lectual processes taking place under the pressure of optimistic 



44 THE problem. [Chap. V. 

bias. Might not the subject be more judiciously treated under 
the methods of modern research, with results less extreme and 
more trustworthy? 



CHAPTER V. 

THE PROBLEM STATED. 



Section 29. — Between the extremes of optimism and pessi- 
mism there is of course every variety of opinion concerning the 
relative weights of good and evil, and the ultimate extinction of 
evil through progress or providence. There are thinkers — we 
may imagine that they constitute a school — whose views we 
wish here to bring into notice. They are neither optimists nor 
pessimists and yet they are in a certain sense both. They are 
optimists in believing that the sum of enjoyment in life is 
greater than the sum of suffering; but they are pessimists in 
believing that evil is inherent in the constitution of things and 
can never be eradicated from existence. They believe that 
the most that progress can do at any future period of the 
world's career is to modify the character of both good and evil, 
improving the one and palliating the other, and thus increasing 
the preponderance of happiness over unhappiness among man- 
kind. With these views the writer is in sympathy. 

After Pessimism and Optimism would probably follow a chap- 
ter on Meliorism, but the material is not at hand. The formal and 
definite conception of evil as something which can be modified 
and softened but not eradicated or in any way completely over- 
come, is one which has not recommended itself to the modern 
mind till very recently. The doctrine of progress appears to 
have been in full vigor during the first half of this century; and 



Sec. 2p.] THE INTERMEDIATE. 45 

the obvious inference was that the movement of progression 
implies perfection, and would not cease till it had reached it. 
Many still so believe. 

The protest against optimism assumes two forms, the one 
extreme, pessimistic, the other moderate, melioristic. When the 
study of this subject was commenced twenty years ago (1861) by 
the writer, he supposed that "all the world" were in one way or 
another optimists, except a very few eccentric people who were 
pessimists. The name meliorism had not been thought of, the 
idea had not crystalized. The reasoning would have been almost 
certain to be put in some such form as this: Evil is either 
curable or incurable; if it is curable we are optimists; if it is 
incurable, why, then, of course, pessimism must be true. We so 
like to have things one way or the other, decisive and incisive. 
But pessimism does not necessarily follow from the ineradicable 
nature of evil. Many evils which cannot be extirpated may 
be palliated, and suffering which cannot be escaped may be 
mitigated. And with this incentive to action, labor should be 
expended for what seems to be the best possible. This is the 
melioristic view, i This, too, would properly include all cases in 
which certain evils gather force with time; they should be met 
at every step, and their progress as much as possible retarded; 
for this is a form of palliation which it is beneficent to promote. 
Life is a continued battle; and only under opposition and diffi- 
culty does manhood attain its full strength; and in this way 
even those stubborn evils which can only be palliated or par- 
tially arrested in their course, are not without some redeeming 
influence in the economy of life. 

Optimism and pessimism in their exclusive forms are extreme 
systems which embody both truth and error, as such systems 
nearly always do. The truth usually crystallizes into some 
intermediate form after having first passed through the extremes 
on either side. The mean, where in the end, it is usually found 
that the truth rests, is always the last in favor. This is true even 
in science as elsewhere, as the history of science abundantly 
proves; although the theoretical extremes are due rather to the 



46 THE problem. \_Cha_p. V. 

neglect than to the application of rigid scientific methods. But 
as shown by the history of discovery, this is the way the human 
mind has of ultimately finding out precisely where the truth is. 
In the case under consideration it is the function of correct 
methods to bring together the truth, which the extremes embody, 
into an integral system with its basis resting in the facts of sci- 
ence and history. 

Section 30. — The summary of views given in the preceding 
chapter is, of course, intended to show reason for believing that 
unqualified optimism has entered largely into the faith and 
motives of men. Now, if such optimism be an extreme 
embodying cardinal error, it is less desirable than some other 
system with more truth and less error; — hence, the need of a 
new examination of the subject; hence, a use for this volume, if 
it prove equal to its opportunity. This may not be conclusive 
to the reader ; all that is asked is that it may be accepted as 
conclusive with the writer. But while this volume has been in 
preparation a change has been going on in the minds of many 
concerning the nature of evil and its relations to life. The 
change seems to have been taking place silently and almost 
unperceived — as many another change has done before — the 
cause of it being "in the air," and isolated minds becoming 
affected simultaneously, i Of course, all this may be traced 
eventually to progress in the work and methods of science and 
education, and to changes in practical life. Only within a few 
years has it been thought necessary by unprejudiced students to 
assail the legion of optimistic spirits raised by the incantation of 
such words as Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Under like condi- 
tions has the exigency of the times been revealed as well as met 
by efforts to obstruct the inroads of pessimism. And I will con- 
fess to some surprise on reading a recent statement in the North 
American Review (April, 188 1), by an English writer, that the 
exultant optimism prevailing half a century since has quite dis- 
appeared from the utterances of accredited teachers, and a modi- 
fied faith taken its place which recognizes man's ability — not 
to root out the evil of the world, but merely to lessen it. This 



Sec. 31.] meliorism. 47 

does not come ostentatiously into the literature of the day, 
which is bound to be as rosy as possible ; the evidence of the 
change is rather negative and subdued, the gradual subsidence 
of one tone, and the gradual adoption of another as quietly as 
possible ; and consequently the change might be easily over- 
looked by contemporaries. The reviewer makes the change far 
greater than I should have taken it to be; but his estimate may 
be correct. I had long observed that some such view as this was 
not uncommon among practical men of the world, who think by 
spontaneity and work by profession, but who never write. Quite 
commonly such people's instincts of what affects life are more 
apt to be correct than the elaborately formed judgments of closet- 
thinkers and accredited public teachers. 

Section 31. — The intermediate views on this subject will no 
doubt vary considerably, leaning with one toward optimism, 
with another toward pessimism. The following is given to assist 
in forming a definite conception of what this intermediate ground 
is, premising that the summary may have a slight pessimistic 
tinge : " This view of human life, a view which lies midway 
between optimism and pessimism, has been called, I believe, by 
G. H. Lewes, meliorism [Sully says the name was given by Mrs. 
Lewes]. It assumes that misery is, on the whole, the lot of 
mankind, but that the mass of suffering and discomfort at pres- 
ent existing is capable of being indefinitely reduced by human 
endeavor. Progress in this view of the situation consists in a 
continual encroachment of human effort upon the domain of 
evil. We now conceive the 'what might be,' not as a heaven of 
positive bliss, but as a little more relief from the inevitable pain 
of being." — (Mark Pattison, in North American Review, April, 
1881). 

Meliorists may put in their work with different views concern- 
ing the opposing force which most needs to be resisted. They 
may believe that optimism is strong by pre-occupancy and needs 
to be dislodged, or they may look upon pessimism as the young, 
vigorous, and aggressive power from which most is to be feared. 
On reading Mr. James Sully's work on this subject (Pessimism), 



48 THE PROBLEM. [Chap. V, 

this view of its origin and execution is obviously suggested, — 
that the author had studied German pessimism both as to its 
plausibility as a philosophy and its proselytism as a practical move- 
ment, till he felt that it was a power of sufficient importance to 
be opposed. The leading purpose of the volume is to show that 
pessimism is not tenable. This is the author's bias, or rather, 
the idea which directed his effort. He really makes no formal 
argument against optimism; but in his discussion of pessimism, 
it turns out incidentally that good reasons must be recognized 
why optimism in its extreme form is not defensible. Hence, 
the author rejects both, and adopts meliorism. But while the 
work done in the interest of meliorism is, perhaps, most likely 
to be directed against pessimism, the present volume aims rather 
to fortify against optimism. It was conceived and has been 
written under the impression that English-speaking peoples are 
far more likely to go to extremes in the direction of optimism 
than in that of pessimism. The practical need appeared to be to 
show that the prevalent form of optimism concerning the inci- 
dental character of evil, and its gradual and certain elimination, 
is not warranted by science, history, or contemporary experience. 
And this concerns not only philosophy, but practical life as well. 
If it be true, it enters into the living questions of the day ; and 
we have ventured in future chapters (Parts VI. and VII.) with 
greater misgivings than in any other parts of the work, briefly to 
x discuss some of these questions. 

Section 32. — The system of nature is a unit with all its parts 
interrelated, and if the inseparable connection of good and evil 
in sentient and moral existence is inherent in the system, there 
is something which corresponds to it in the purely physical world, 
and that something may be found in its simplest form in the 
primitive action of the cosmical forces. If there be truth in this 
view, we should be able, to some extent, after finding in the sim- 
plest forms of action the germ of harmony and discord, of good 
and evil, to trace it as it becomes more complicated in the 
course of its unfolding in the evolution of the world, first in 
physics, afterward in sentient life, and finally in the intellectual 



Sec 32 .] FORMS OF CONFLICT. 49 

and moral spheres of existence. The term " conflict " has beenN 
chosen to designate this general fact. In its primitive form it 
may be simple attraction and repulsion, which would afterwards, 
in the course of evolution, assume a multiplicity of forms with 
their accessories, which may be indicated by the terms alterna- 
tion, contrast, antithesis, contrariety, duality, polarity, compen- 
sation, reflex action, action and reaction, circular motion, imper- 
fect equilibrium, conflict of forces and laws, good and evil, 
enjoyment and suffering, pleasure and pain, happiness and, 
misery, etc. 

It will be the aim of this work to afford some elucidation of 
the law which involves the necessity of physical and moral dis- 
cord. The ancient views of good and evil were at best but 
vague anticipations of the truth, while the modern are for the 
most part fragmentary and contradictory. No satisfactory expla- 
nation has been given of the difficulties which it is acknowledged 
are involved in the subject ; and while there is disagreement as 
it regards the essential character and relations of good and evil, 
no adequate account has been given of the cause and origin of 
evil. If the subject admits of being modernized in scientific 
form, the attempt has not been successfully made. The follow- 
ing chapters may do something to fill this vacuum in systematic 
thought on a subject of acknowledged difficulty. 

Note. — The word pleasure is one which will occur a great many times in the 
course of this volume; and since it is somewhat ambiguous, it is necessary to explain 
in what sense it may be used. To many it conveys the idea of sensual enjoyment 
even to criminal indulgence, and is rather the antithesis than the synonym of happi- 
ness. It has received this sense from the trick of puritanism to decry indiscrim- 
inately the enjoyments of sense, however temperate and legitimate. In this 
sense it would of course be a very different thing from happiness; nevertheless 
will it be here used to designate whatever is legitimately agreeable or happifying. 
The intemperate indulgence of sense brings more pain than pleasure, while all 
happiness is in a sense pleasurable feeling. There is a pleasure even in martyr- 
dom — the gratification of certain faculties. In a lower sense there is fascination 
in the hardships of the chase and of war. Men even love to dare the dangers of 
battle. The word pleasure will be largely used as the antithesis of pain, misery, 
suffering, unhappiness, and consequently as quite synonymous with happiness, 
enjoyment. It will therefore represent pleasurable states of the mind as well as 
of the body — pleasures of conscience as well as pleasures of sense. The con- 



50 THE PROBLEM. [Chap. V. 

sciousness of doing good, of having discharged a duty involving repugnant 
labor, of having chosen in any contingency the wiser part, of having been true to 
the convictions of right even at great cost, and of having conscientiously used 
the opportunities of life, — all these bring pleasurable feeling; and in this sense 
pleasure or the pleasurable is what all are seeking, even when they renounce it; — 
and this is true of the ascetic as well as of the voluptuary, each according to his 
own mistaken notions of the greatest good in life. Pleasure is a thing not to be 
concerned about as an end. When the pursuit is too hot it usually eludes the pur- 
suer. As friendships are best held by manly independence, so will pleasure not 
bear formal solicitation, but deigns companionship only on compliance with 
its laws. 



PART SECOND. 

CONSIDERATIONS FROM SCIENCE. 



CHAPTER VI. 

EXISTENCE. 

Section 33. — Existence is the sum of all* mysteries. Be the 
marvel at any point ever so great, it is only a fraction of the still 
greater marvel of existence. Within its sphere come all we 
think, feel, do, and are, and yet, of the essential nature of exist- 
ence we know nothing and can know nothing. 

Has existence had a beginning? The human mind is a blank 
in presence of the inquiry. There is no answer within the bounds 
of the knowable. We cannot master in any complete sense the 
conception of an eternity of existence past any more than we 
can master the conception of the creation of a universe out of 
nothing. We use the terms as we use notation many figures 
deep, only with a still less definite conception of their power. 
And since the mystery is inscrutable, the inquirer can well afford 
to pass it over for subjects which will yield a better return for 
the labor expended. Locke very wisely recommends that we 
"sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things which upon 
examination are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities." 
Still, from education and habit, rather than from necessary con- 
stitution, the mind inclines to find rest in the belief of a 
beginning; and since it cannot penetrate to the beginning 
of existence, it contents itself with the belief of mythical or 
philosophical doctrines concerning the origin or beginning of the 
present order of things. Theology proper is exclusive, and ad- 



52 existence. [Chap. VI. 

mits of no speculation which ignores the absolute fiat of creation. 
The great body of speculation by scientific men favors the nebu- 
lar hypothesis, with more or less emendation, — the only system 
that approaches a rational explanation of the " becoming " of the 
present order of things. According to this view matter was 
already in existence in nebulous form, and passed to the evolution 
of systems of worlds by the continuous action of natural forces. 
" The beginning " "here has reference to forms, and not to that 
something out of which forms are evolved. 

Section 34. — What is that essential thing without which there 
could be no consciousness of existence? Is it the old dualism 
of matter and spirit, or the more modern dualism of matter and 
motion, the recent monism simply of motion, or something still 
more recondite; or is it mere consciousness without anything to 
correspond with it in the external world? 

Since idealism, which does not admit the existence of an 
external cause of sensation, but finds all existence within the 
mind itself in the form of consciousness, has the support of 
famous names in philosophy, it might seem that the first step 
should be to determine whether there is validity in this doc- 
trine. But to most readers as to myself, this would appear to be 
an idle inquiry; and there is already more than enough of litera- 
ture on the subject. Our belief in external existence is an 
ultimate fact which hardly admits of discussion. 

Realism may be regarded in this connection as taking two 
distinct forms : one is that of unthinking experience which 
takes the external world to be absolutely what it appears to our 
consciousness to be; the other is brought out by philosophical 
criticism, which proves that the external causes of sensation and 
the perception which follows, are not necessarily so related that 
the one is a copy of the other. It is shown that the external 
world may be, indeed must be, essentially different from what it 
appears to be in consciousness. 

Persons who are little in the habit of critical introversion, are 
apt to think of matter as if they knew just what sort of thing it 
is. Their error consists in mistaking the subjective for the ob- 



Sec. 34.] COGNITION. 53 

jective, the phenomenal for the absolute. Sound, for example, 
and color, have no existence outside of the sentient mind. They 
have external causes, but these causes are neither sound nor 
color, being in the one case simply waves of the atmosphere 
which strike on the tympanum of the ear, and in the other, waves 
of a more ethereal substance which strike on the retina of the 
eye. What we call heat is purely subjective, the external cause 
of it being motion, as Locke and Bacon stated long since, and 
as science has abundantly proved. 

" Heat, light, actinism, are, then, not only principles existing 
independent of each other, but effects arising in bodies from the 
reception of motions in the ether, motions which differ from 
each other in their rapidity. Of those which the eye and ear 
take cognizance of, the most rapid impart to the mind the sen- 
sation of violet light, the slowest the sensation of red, and inter- 
mediate ones the intermediate optical tints. Colors, like light 
itself, are nothing existing exteriorly. They are simply mental 
interpretations of modes of motion in the ether, and in this they 
represent musical sounds, which exist only as interpretations by 
the mind of waves in the air." — (J. W. Draper, Memoirs, page 
131-2). 

The following is from another distinguished scientist : " On 
the hypothesis which appears to me to be the most convenient, 
sensation is a product of the sensiferous apparatus caused by 
certain modes of motion which are set up in it by impulses from 
without. The sensiferous apparatuses are, as it were, factories, 
all of which at the one end receive raw materials of a similar 
kind — namely, modes of motion — while at the other, each turns 
out a special product, the feeling which constitutes the kind of 
sensation characteristic of it." " In ultimate analysis, then, it 
appears that a sensation is the equivalent in terms of consciousness 
for a mode of motion of the matter of the sensorium. But, if 
inquiry is pushed a stage further, and the question is asked, 
1 what then do we know about matter and motion ? ' there is 
but one reply possible. All that we know about motion is that 
it is a name for certain changes in the relations of our visual, 
4 



54 existence. [Chap. VI. 

tactile, and muscular sensations; and all that we know about 
matter is that it is the hypothetical substance of physical phe- 
nomena — the assumption of the existence of which is as pure a 
piece of metaphysical speculation as that of the substance of 
mind." — (Huxley, in Nineteenth Century, 1879). 

This is indeed a luminous statement from the physiologico- 
philosopher's point of view, though we may not quite understand 
the closing words. In a philosophical sense it may be apt, 
indeed, to say that " all we know about matter is that it is the 
hypothetical substance of physical phenomena;" but the assump- 
tion of the existence of matter appears to be instinctive and 
inevitable rather than "a piece of metaphysical speculation." 
Animals, children, savages, and common people, as well as 
metaphysical philosophers, assume matter to exist, and act accord- 
ingly. 

The trouble with the subject is that, in treating of it, we have 
to assume the existence of certain things of which, at the same 
time, we must disclaim any real knowledge. What do we know 
more of the essential nature of motion than of the essential 
nature of sound or heat, which we call in motion to explain ? 
Thus, we say sound has an external cause in the form of 
atmospheric waves, and an instrument of value has been 
invented on this principle ; but our perception of waves is 
itself as purely subjective as that of sound ; and this is true of 
all our perceptions of force, motion, vibration, and the like. 
We cannot get out of ourselves, and when we seem to be treat- 
ing of things without, we are really treating of what is within. 

Every writer on this subject becomes entangled in this diffi- 
culty; and while Herbert Spencer, for example, shows that 
idealism cannot proceed a step without assuming the existence 
of what it denies, he does not himself wholly escape from the 
like absurdity. 

Section 35. — More than two thousand years ago, it was very 
well understood in certain schools of Greek philosophy that 
perceptions of external objects cannot be copies of those objects. 
The Pyrrhonists and New Academicians recognized this fact, 



&£• 35-1 PERCEPTION RELATIVE. 55 

and drew from it mistaken inferences against the certainty of 
knowledge. Few who have studied the subject in modern times 
have failed to see that our perceptions of external things are 
necessarily subjective, being, we assume, an effect upon self by 
a cause which is not self. Cudworth taught that, " we cannot 
be sure merely by the passions of sense, what the absolute 
nature of a corporeal object is without us, our perception being 
only relative to ourselves, our several organs and bodily crasis," 
"and so do not comprehend the nature of the thing as it is abso- 
lutely in itself, but only our own passion of it." Even Reid, the 
common- sense philosopher, says that, "no man can conceive 
any sensation to resemble any known (?) qualities of bodies." 
Stewart, who followed the common-sense philosophy of Reid, 
denied that smell, taste, and hearing afford to the mind any 
image of external objects, the sensations peculiar to them as 
well as that of color being purely subjective. Thomas Brown 
agreed with Stewart that sensations of color "need contain no 
notion of extension, but that even sensations appropriate to 
touch are as truly subjective, and that both suggest the extended 
and external object only through an inveterate association." 
Hamilton taught that, "our whole knowledge of mind and 
matter is relative — conditioned — relatively conditioned. Of 
things absolutely or in themselves — be they external, be they 
internal — we know nothing, or know them to be incognizable." 
Even Dr. Porter (from whose work on the Human Intellect the 
preceding examples, except the first, are taken) who teaches that 
we can know the unconditioned and absolute, favors the view 
"that the objects touched, and tasted, and smelled, and colored, 
etc., etc., which we call the material universe, are not realities, 
but only phenomena jointly produced by two unknowable real- 
ities which we call matter and embodied soul." 

Mr. Herbert Spencer, in the second volume of his Psychology, 
has treated this subject very fully. While he rejects idealism he 
distinguishes between crude and transfigured realism. We 
quote: "The realism we are committed to is one which simply 
asserts objective existence as separate from, and independent of, 



5 6 existence. [Chap. VI, 

subjective existence. But it affirms neither that any one mode 
of this objective existence is in reality that which it seems, nor 
that the connections among its modes are objectively what they 
seem. Thus it stands widely distinguished from crude realism ; 
and to mark the distinction it may properly be called trans- 
figured realism." 

What we have to do with wholly is phenomenon, and not 
absolute existence. We know nothing but phenomenon, and 
whatever else it may be, it cannot be divested of its subjective 
element ; consequently, when we speak of matter, force, energy, 
motion, action, we mean to designate externalities which take 
shape in consciousness under the laws of our mental constitu- 
tion. We are here limited by the conditions of perception, and 
there is no need of a struggle to pass this boundary, since phe- 
nomena come into consciousness under the order of uniform 
sequence, and are all that concern either life or philosophy. 

This subject has received so much philosophical attention that 
it could not well be passed over here without some slight notice. 
But while its literature is immense, its difficulties are insuperable. 
But for all practical purposes, — indeed, for all philosophico-scien- 
tific purposes, it suffices to accept the deliverances of the healthy 
and universal consciousness. This recognizes an external world, 
and it does not matter for practical and scientific ends whether 
we regard this world in the light of crude realism or of trans- 
figured realism, or as the ideal projection of the ego. After the 
philosopher has been grimly at work demolishing crude realism, 
or, after he has been happily engaged building up an idealistic 
world, he turns about and discourses of nature precisely as if 
crude realism were true. He has no alternative. Language itself 
has been constructed on the undoubted veracity of conscious- 
ness, and it has no meaning else. Language was not con- 
sciously originated by philosophers on a basis of scientific 
accuracy, but spontaneously by little-thinking people on a basis 
of crude conception and deceptive appearance. This language 
we have still to use. We all say the sun rises and sets, and 
nobody is misled ; we know scientifically that it does no such 



$ ec ' SS-] PERCEPTION RELIABLE. 57 

thing. Physicists no longer believe that electricity is a "fluid," 
but they are constantly speaking of electrical currents. In this 
sense Dr. McCosh is correct enough when he affirms that "what 
we perceive originally are things," and that "when we classify 
plants by their resemblances, we classify the plants and not im- 
pressions;" but philosopically, it is a child's weapon with which 
to meet the scepticism of Hume or the agnosticism of Huxley. 

We have to do with our impressions of external things as they 
exist in consciousness, after having passed through the channels 
of the senses, and we very well understand one another when 
we speak of matter, force, or motion, though, like most words, 
their connotations are very different to different minds. We 
have to do with extension, with solidity, with motion, with suc- 
cession, with color, with taste, with smell, with sound ; and what- 
ever these things may be under the test of the philosophies, they 
are yet actual things relatively to us, and it is only relatively 
that we have to do with them. We can only know phenomena, 
and that is all we need to know. Science deals only with crude 
realism because only this is definite. Transformed or reasoned 
realism has no distinctness of outline as an interpretation of the 
external world, and belongs necessarily to the domain of specu- 
lation, and not to that of science. Spencer observes that 
"language absolutely refuses to express the idealistic and scepti- 
cal hypotheses." It just as absolutely refuses to express the 
hypothesis of transfigured realism; and the hypothesis is not 
utilized by any of us who hold it. It is a sort of philosophical 
toy elaborately constructed, and laid carefully away, to be shown 
occasionally to guests, but never more to be used in the serious 
work of intellect. 

Our notice of this subject may be closed with the lucid sum- 
ming up which G. H. Lewes has given it in his History of Phi- 
losophy (p. 304): "Do we then side with the Academicians in 
proclaiming all human knowledge deceptive? No, to them as 
to the Pyrrhonists, we answer : You are quite right in affirming 
that man cannot transcend the sphere of his own consciousness, 
cannot penetrate the real essences of things, cannot know 



58 existence. [Chap. VI. 

causes, can only know phenomena. But this affirmation — though 
it crushes metaphysics — though it interdicts the inquiry into 
nownena, into essences and causes, as frivolous because futile — 
does not touch science. If all our knowledge is but a 
knowledge of phenomena, there can still be a science of 
phenomena adequate to all man's true wants. If sensation is 
but the effect of an external cause, we, who can never know 
that cause, know it in its relations to us, that is in its effects. 
These effects are as constant as their causes ; and, consequently, 
there can be a science of effects. Such a science is that named 
positive science, the aim of which is to trace the co-existences 
and successions of phenomena ; that is, to trace the relation of 
cause and effect throughout the universe submitted to our 
inspection." 

Section 36. — For the sake of emphasis we may imagine one 
of the modern school making a profession of (philosophical) 
faith, positive and negative, as follows: "I do not know in any 
definite sense what matter in itself really is; it has no revelations 
of the mysteries of existence for me: I am not a materialist. 
The external world does not come to my consciousness or my 
reason as a something projected from the ego : I am no idealist. 
Noumenon, the ding on stch, the substratum of being, by 
whatever name known, is to me a sealed mystery: I am no 
metaphysician. The absolute is a name with no definite mean- 
ing, and must ever remain so: I am no transcendentalist. The 
fourth dimension of space and the finitude and infinitude of the 
universe are quite beyond my reach: I am no pangeometer. I 
know nothing of force as an entity distinct from the form it 
assumes in consciousness; I know nothing of entities of any 
kind: I am no schoolman. I know nothing of mind and soul 
apart from conscious experience : I am not a supernaturalist. 
Essences, spirits, and ghosts are shut up forever in the realm of 
the unknowable; I am not able to transcend the operations of 
my own mind: I am no mystic. I believe in the veracity of per- 
ception, not as the copy of things, but as the uniform interpre- 
tator of relations between the ego and non-ego: I am no seep- 



Sec. 36.] PROFESSION OF FAITH. 59 

tic. I believe in the relativity of all knowledge as a thing bound 
up with consciousness which there is no transcending. I know 
only phenomenon which is a compound of an external and 
an internal — or something which is not subjective and a some- 
thing which is. It is with consciousness we have to deal; and 
beyond what comes to the consciousness through the senses as 
the basis of experience and of ail thinking and knowing, I am 
absolutely in the dark — as all are, not excepting mystics and 
holy men, whatever light they imagine shines about them. I am 
by open confession what they are by the necessity which binds 
us all. Truth is the correct interpretation of the phenomena of 
life and nature; and I believe there is truth in the old as well as in 
the new; and that the best possible is to be had, not by cutting 
away from the past, but by its gradual transformation into the 
present. I believe in the value of systematic knowledge, and in 
the methods which have led through conflict to such knowledge. 
I believe in the order of Nature, in the science which interprets 
that order, and in the common sense which duly recognizes it in 
practical life; and these are the living, rational trinity of Faith, 
Thought, and Works." 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE UNIT OF PHYSICAL EXISTENCE. 

Section 37. — Between the mind and something else through 
the medium of the senses, an external world takes form within 
consciousness. Acknowledging the limitations of language, in 
what phraseology, or form of thought, is it most convenient to 
render our conception of this objective existence? It is usually 
spoken of as matter in various forms with various properties, 



6o UNIT OF PHYSICAL EXISTENCE. [Chap. VII. 

and with various states of activity and rest. This method of 
regarding external things is so woven into all thought, that it is 
not possible to lay it aside if we would, though accuracy may 
require that the use of it in philosophical connections be made 
under protest, and with some qualification. This prevailing use 
of the word matter, quite commonly connotes that it is itself a 
dead thing, and manifests action only as it is acted upon. It is 
said to be acted on by the forces, or by an independent spiritual 
power; and matter and force, or dead matter and some living 
power are very generally regarded as distinct things. In this 
sense force hardly escapes the imputation of being a mythical 
something, a sort of metaphysical entity, which has a part to 
play only in the absence of more distinct conceptions. This 
may only show how primitive in philosophy we still are. The 
philosophers of China have no place in their system for such a 
thing as " dead matter." With them matter is not distinct from 
force, nor force from matter. The two are bound together as 
one, and it is inconceivable to them that one could have an exist- 
ence without the other. They are the two poles of the same 
thing. "The relation of force to matter is essential, and the 
terms before and after are so far inapplicable to it; though to the 
principle of force is given the precedence. All exists through 
the primal force, whose union with form and quantity is only 
possible through the primal matter, while of itself without this, 
it could neither strive, nor work, nor purpose." — (Chu-hi, Phi- 
losophy of Nature — Johnson's Oriental Religions, China, p. 928). 
This resembles the modern view which is probably quite com- 
mon among scientific men, that force is inherent in matter con- 
stituting an essential part of it, without which it would not be 
matter. . This is a simpler view, involving less of arbitrary theory 
and possessing greater logical aptness, than the dualistic. We 
know -nothing of matter but by the action of the forces which 
are reputed to be in some form associated with it. " We know 
matter only by its forces," says Faraday. And J. B. Stallo, who 
disclaims faith in the fundamental concepts of modern physics, 
declares, "that mass — or, to use the ordinary term inert matter, 



Sec. 37.] MATTER AND FORCE. 6 1 

or matter per se — can not be an object of sensible experience. 
Things are objects of sensible experience only by virtue of their 
action and reaction. As Leibnitz said, • Whatever does not act 
does not exist.'" Again: "Mass reveals its presence, or evinces 
its reality only by its action, its balanced or unbalanced force, 
its tension or motion." — (Modern Physics, 149, 161). Professor 
Macomber observes : "It is noteworthy that matter and force 
are always found associated. In fact, we are ignorant of force 
except as it affects matter. This suggests the query whether 
there be such a thing as pure force. Since matter and force are 
never separated, may they not, after ail be identical? Not a few 
philosophers have seriously urged this doctrine. By simply 
assuming each molecule of matter to be a centre of force, we can 
account for all its properties. Regarded in this light, matter and 
force are one and the same." — (Matter and Force, p. 58). Prof. 
Cooke : " We may with Newton, regard them [atoms] as infinitely 
small, that is as mere points, or, as Boscovich called them, vari- 
able centres of attractive and repulsive forces. 
According to this view, matter is purely a manifestation of force." 
— (Chemical Physics, p. no). If matter is purely a manifesta- 
tion of force," if " we know matter only by its forces," then the 
dogma of "dead matter" — the idea of matter in the old "mate- 
rialistic " sense — is an assumption and a prejudice which mod- 
ern research is dissipating. 

We only know of objective existence by its action on mind 
through the senses. It is not possible to conceive of anything 
in the external world which is destitute of every form of action 
upon ourselves. " All that we know about matter relates to the 
series of phenomena in which energy is transferred from one 
portion of matter to another, till in some part of the series our 
bodies are affected, and we become conscious of a sensation." 
(Matter and Motion, J. Clerk Maxwell, p. 164.) 

The most permanent forms of matter are, under the necessi- 
ties and limitations of perception, but the imperfect equilibrium 
of forces. The simplest element of knowledge, our conscious- 
ness of resistance, arises from an external force opposed to our 



62 UNIT OF PHYSICAL EXISTENCE. [Chap. VII. 

own. What comes within the range of cognition, is the action 
of things — the play of some force. It is some power that 
acts, but we know nothing of that power except by its action. 
" In strict mathematical language the word force is used to sig- 
nify the supposed cause of the tendency which a material body 
is found to have towards alteration in its state of rest or motion. 
It is indifferent whether we speak of this observed tendency o*- 
or of its immediate cause, since the cause is simply inferred 
from the effect, and has no other evidence to support it." — (Elec- 
tricity and Magnetism, Maxwell, p. 146.) 

It is the work of science in its ultimate function to determine 
the character and relations of actions simply. What comes into 
consciousness as lying back of these actions is the result of infer- 
ence readily made ; and we easily conceive of the universe as a 
system of active powers. The term force occupies a position 
between those of power and action. In the plural it may be used 
to designate powers, but it has a more obvious reference to 
action. It is easier to conceive of a power not in action than so 
to conceive of a force. To speak of a living or active force may 
lend emphasis, but it verges on tautology. Latent, dormant, 
potential forces, it is true, are spoken of, but a force that is 
latent, dormant, or potential, is a power of which we know noth- 
ing while in that state. We only know of it from its antecedents 
or its consequents in the form of action. A power may be 
latent or inactive, but a force that is so, is no force at all — it is 
practically non-existent. "Force is wholly expended in the 
action it produces ;" and " the measure of a force is the quantity 
of motion which it produces in a unit of time." — (Elements 
Natural Philosophy, Tait & Thomson, 54, 55). Force also 
implies something more than action ; it might be defined as 
power in action, thus combining the inference of cause with the 
cognition of effect. " Force may be of divers kinds, as pressure, 
or gravity, or friction, or any of the attractive or repulsive 
actions of electricity, magnetism, etc." — (Tait & Thomson). 
Energy is a kindred term but has a reference peculiarly its own 
to the continuous supply of the means of action. The massive 



Sec. S8?[ THE FORCE-POINT. 63 

bones and firm, bellying muscles of the athlete show that he has 
power though he be sleeping. When aroused into action he 
manifests force, and sustains it with energy. From the actions 
we observe in nature, and the energy with which they are carried 
on, we measure the intensity of the forces and define their char- 
acter. Concerning the power that lies back of these, we may- 
guess, but can know absolutely nothing. However, we are not 
to expect too much of such distinctions ; and I am well aware 
that in this attempt I have stepped upon unsafe ground. Power, 
force, energy are often interchangeable terms, so nearly are they 
allied in meaning, showing that in regard to the phenomena to 
which they relate, there has been no uniform conception of clear- 
cut and well defined ideas. Even the masters differ in their use 
of these terms. 

Section 38. — Speculations concerning the simplest element 
of force in nature have not brought out satisfactory results, as 
we should very naturally expect from the inherent obscurity of 
the subject, which barely lies within the region of the knowable, 
and which probably does still lie within the region of the 
unknown. The theory of Boscovich has held a prominent place 
in speculation of this kind, and has received a sort of theoret- 
ical endorsement by certain authorities in science of the highest 
character. His theory is that the point as the center of force 
is the simplest conceivable form of physical existence. Bos- 
covich's atom is not a material and extended something in which 
force resides; it is simply a point, a center of force or power. 
Faraday, who was not, however, a mathematician, adopted Bos- 
covich's theory, and upon it builds his magnificent scheme of 
polarity, chemical affinity, the transmutation of forces, etc. 

Joseph Bayma, professor of philosophy, Stonyhurst College, 
has elaborated this subject with apparent great care in his work 
on Molecular Mechanics. He appears to establish it as a 
mathematical necessity that force can only act from point to 
point. "Primitive substance cannot be materially extended." 
" In a material element the matter is a point, from which the 
action ot the element is directed towards other points in space, 



64 UNIT OF PHYSICAL EXISTENCE. [Chap. VII. 

and to which the actions of other material points in space are 
directed" (page 31). On this view, "the matter" is the force 
center, as he elsewhere explains more fully. We can only state 
the author's leading proposition without the reasoning with which 
he supports it. 

Thomas Rawson Birks, M. D., who has investigated the same 
subject, has recognized the same mathematical necessity in the 
simplest* element of existence. He says : " Every particle is 
either a mathematical point or else contains such a point, as the 
true center from which the attraction proceeds" (page 7). "The 
simplest view of matter, derived at once from the law ot gravi- 
tation, is that it consists of monads, or movable centers of force, 
unextended, but in definite position, which attract each other 
with a force varying inversely as the squares of the distance 
between the centers. This conception of points that are cen- 
ters of force, results plainly and unavoidably from the nature of 
the law of gravitation. Any further conception of the constitu- 
tion of matter is an unproved addition " (page 9). 

Dr. Christian Wiener, in his work, Die Grundziige der Welt- 
ordnung, while maintaining that there is nothing in the universe 
but matter and the forces, the forces residing within matter, 
which is extended and impenetrable substance (Wesen); yet in 
discussing the general properties of matter, he " yields to the 
logical necessity of recognizing infinitely small particles of mat- 
ter or points of matter " (page 8). According to J. Clerk Max- 
well, a high authority on this subject, "the diagram of a material 
particle is of course a mathematical point, which has no con- 
figuration." — (Matter and Motion, page 14). M. Couchy defines 
atoms as " material points without extension." 

Section 39. — The latest view taken by leading mathematicians 
and physicists of the ultimate unit of matter as known to us, is 
that it is a vortex ring in a universal fluid. This fluid has only the 
properties of invariable density (incompressibility), inertia, and 
perfect mobility — (Maxwell). The vortex ring in such a fluid is 
permanent as to volume and strength, and permanent as to qual- 
ity whether knotted on itself or linked with other rings; and is 



Sec. jp.] THE VORTEX RING. '65 

capable of infinite changes of form, and may vibrate at different 
periods as we know molecules do. An advantage of the ring 
over the solid atom is that it vibrates. " But according to 
Thomson, though the primitive fluid is 'the only true matter,' 
yet that which we call matter is not the primitive fluid itself, but 
a mode of motion of that primitive fluid. It is the mode of 
motion which constitutes the vortex rings, and which furnishes 
us with examples of that permanence and continuity of existence 
which we are accustomed to attribute to matter itself. The 
primitive fluid, the only true matter, entirely eludes our percep- 
tions, when it is not endued with the mode of motion which 
converts certain portions of it into vortex rings, and thus renders 
it molecular." — (Encyclopedia Brittanica, Art. Atoms, J. C. 
Maxwell). Professor Tait (Recent Advances, page 294), 
observes : " This property of rotation (vortex rings) may be 
the basis of all that appeals to our senses as matter." 

This may, indeed, appear to be a speculation more curious 
than valuable. It resolves matter into motion, that is, matter as 
known to the senses. The cessation of this motion would, 
therefore, be to us the annihilation of matter. But whether or 
not the vortex ring be the particular mode of motion of this 
primitive fluid which renders the universe sensible, there is still 
a plausibility in the general elements of the view concerning the 
primitive fluid itself and the necessity of motion therein to give 
existence to sensible forms of matter, that commends it to con- 
sideration on a subject which is at once interesting and obscure. 
Two of the greatest names in modern research, Helmholtz and 
Thomson, are associated in the mathematical and experimental 
elucidation of the vortex ring as the unit of matter; two more 
belonging to the same class, Maxwell and Tait, have appeared 
in the statement of the theory herein given; and on a subject at 
once so curious, so difficult, and so instructive, we append brief 
statements of two others. 

C. A. Wurtz observes : 

"The circle is their position of equilibrium, and when their form is altered, they 
oscillate around this position, and finally resume the circular form. But if we 
try to cut them they recede before the knife, or bend around it, without allowing 



66 UNIT OF PHYSICAL EXISTENCE \_Chap. VII. 

themselves to be injured. They give, therefore, a representation of something 
which would be indivisible. And when two rings meet each other, they behave 
like two solid elastic bodies; after the impact they vibrate energetically." Two 
rings may pass through each other alternately. ' ' But through all the changes of 
form and velocity, each preserves its own individuality, and these two circular 
masses of smoke move through the air as if they were something perfectly dis- 
tinct and independent." — (Atomic Theory,pp. 327-8). He adds: "Helmholtz, 
therefore, has discovered the fundamental properties of matter in vortex motion, 
and Sir William Thomson has stated, 'This perfect medium and these vortex 
rings which move through it, represent the universe'. A fluid fills all space, and 
what we call matter are portions of this fluid which are animated with vortex 
motion. There are innumerable legions of very small fractions, or portions, but 
each of these portions is perfectly limited, distinct from the entire mass, and distinct 
from all others, not only in its substance, but in its mass and its mode of motion 
— qualities which it will preserve forever. These portions are atoms. In the per- 
fect medium which contains them all, none of them can change or disappear, 
none of them can be formed spontaneously. Everywhere atoms of the same 
kind are constituted after the same fashion, and are endowed with the same 
properties" (pp.328-9). An American, Professor Macomber, thinks favorably of 
Thomson's suggestion "that what we call matter may be nothing but rotating 
portions of a perfect fluid which occupies all space. In other words, an atom 
is simply vortex motion. Every so-called atom is a vortex ring." — (Matter and 
Force, p. 20). 

But however much the conception of force or of motion may- 
invade the province of matter, the term "matter" is still as 
necessary and as useful as ever. If, for example, matter be 
vortex motion in a perfect fluid, then is vortex motion in a per- 
fect fluid precisely what we know by the name of matter, and 
the name is perfectly legitimate. And it is to be remembered 
that matter we know phenomenally as direct as we know any of 
the phenomena with which we have to deal in life, while vortex 
motion in a perfect fluid as constituting matter is at a much 
farther remove from the immediate field of human knowledge. 
It is entirely consistent, while entertaining these theories of 
matter, to use the term matter in the sense current in every 
day life and in science proper. 

Section 40. — The forces which we regard as constituting essen- 
tially the universe, have not played any simple role of movement 
in brief season, or in small circle of recurring activity: they appear 
rather to have worked out, and to be still working out, a mag- 
nificent destiny. They are passing in phenomenal results from 



Sec. 41.] THE SIMPLEST PROPERTIES, WHAT ? 67 

one stage to another, mainly ascending, sometimes descending; 
the whole becoming constantly more complicated; and we 
give to the movement the name of evolution. But this is only 
one section of the career which we see. It points back to a 
simpler state of things, and forward to a maximum of organized 
complexity, when a general descending movement may begin in 
our world, not to end till it again reaches the simple and disor- 
ganized, in the original, or in some modified, form. 

It comes within the scope of our purpose and plan to inquire 
in the first place, what is the simplest form of activity in the 
economy of nature, of which we can conceive, or of which we 
have any definite knowledge ? This simplest form of the play 
of forces must be our point of beginning as the first term in 
the series of development — as the initiative of the magnificent 
succession of results in all the activities of nature and life. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE PRIMARY FORCES. 

Section 41. — What are the simplest known properties of mat- 
ter — those properties without which it would not be matter? Is it 
attraction? Is it repulsion? Or is it something simpler still? The 
problem of finding one original property of matter from which 
all other properties have been derived, and to which they may all 
be traced, has not been overlooked by students of nature. The 
property so honored is sometimes that of attraction. This view 
may have arisen from the habit of attending to the construction 
of bodies rather than to their dissolution. A writer who is not a 
physicist, and who appears only to see one side, thus states the 
case: "It is a very important generalization that all primary 
forces are attractive; there is no such thing in nature as a primary 



68 THE PRIMARY FORCES. [Chap. VIIL 

repulsive force. For this, as for every other physical law, no 
cause can be assigned except the Divine will. But its purpose is 
obvious. The universe is held together by attractive forces: and 
if, as I believe, the nebular, or, as I prefer to call it, the conden- 
sation theory of world-formation is true, the universe has been 
formed by the action of attractive forces. Repulsive forces, on 
the contrary, it is obvious, could neither form a world nor hold 
it together." — (J. J. Murphy, Habit and Intelligence, Vol. I., 
p. 43). It seems never to have occurred to the author to think 
out how attractive foices acting unresisted could form a world. 
If it be true that the worlds were formed through the loss of 
repulsion, and the relative gain of attraction, that does not by any 
means decide the question of primary force against repulsion. 
Its great prevalence in an earlier condition of our system proves 
it to be primitive, and indicates that it is a primary force. 

No doubt the prejudice in favor of the attractive forces as 
ruling and primary has grown up in the common mind from the 
fact that, in the current manifestations of the natural forces, 
attraction seems greatly to predominate. But this has not 
always been so. On the nebular hypothesis there was a time 
when repulsion was immensely greater than at present, and when 
it could hardly be contemplated as a derivative and secondary 
property of matter. We may allow that repulsion was at its 
maximum, when the volume of the nebula was greatest. By the 
loss of heat this volume would contract under the influence of 
gravitation; but attraction would lose nothing of its original 
power, since the mass of the nebula would be the same what- 
ever its bulk. But from that time till this, repulsion within our 
system has been becoming absolutely less through the radiation 
of heat, and at the same time relatively weaker in proportion to 
attraction. Now, if this repulsion passed out of existence or 
was transformed into attraction, then might there be some 
ground for a case against it as a primary force ; but though out 
of our system, it is still somewhere, maintaining strictly its integ- 
rity as a repulsive energy. It is primary. 

Even now, how much of a world should we have if there were 



Sec. 42.] EXPLAINING ATTRACTION BY REPULSION. 69 

no repulsive energies operative within it ? They are everywhere 
present, and attraction would play a sorry part without them. 
There is repulsion among the atoms even of the solidest sub- 
stances, more in the liquids, in the gases still more. There 
can be no chemical action without the presence of that kind of 
atomic behavior which constitutes repulsion; without it no 
physiological function, no life. However negative in some 
respects it may seem, its presence is absolutely indispensable to 
phenomena. 

Section 42. — But even if attraction in its many forms pre- 
dominate in current phenomena, this is no evidence that it is a 
primary, and repulsion a derivative, force. It is difficult to con- 
ceive how attraction as the primary, could be changed into 
repulsion as the secondary. Indeed, it is easier to conceive how 
repulsion may change into attraction, or how apparent attraction 
may be the product of repulsion. Physicists have put forth 
theories upon which, if true, repulsion is the original, and gravi- 
tation a derivative force. Newton was by no means satisfied that 
gravitation was an inherent property of matter. At one time he 
advanced the theory of an interplanetary medium, very rare 
within the planetary bodies, but becoming denser and denser 
with the distance from them. This would cause among these 
bodies a phenomenon equivalent to gravitation, "every body 
endeavoring to go from the denser parts of the medium toward 
' the rarer." And Dr. Young thus speaks of this theory : " The 
effects of gravitation might be produced by a medium thus con- 
stituted, if its particles were repelled by all material substances 
with a force decreasing like other repulsive forces, simply as the 
distances increase. Its density would then be everywhere such 
as to produce the appearance of an attraction varying like that 
of gravitation. Such an ethereal medium would therefore have 
the advantage of simplicity in the original law of its action, since 
the repulsive force which is known to belong to all matter would 
be sufficient, when thus modified, to account for the principal 
phenomena of attraction." 

Of the same import is the following from J. S. Stewart Glen- 



7^> PRIMARY FORCES. [Chap. VIII. 

nie: "A mechanical force, or the cause of a mechanical 
motion, we know to be in general the condition of a difference 
of pressure." "Hence it appears that if a general mechanical 
theory is possible, the ultimate property of matter must be con- 
ceived to be a mutual repulsion of its parts, and the indubitable 
Newtonian law of universal attraction be deduced herefrom, 
under the actual conditions of the world." "But it must be 
understood that the above proposition is given rather to show 
that as an actual law, universal attraction may be deduced from 
the theoretical conception of universal repulsion, than with any 
pretension to its being the best attainable form of an explana- 
tion of the law." 

Among the attempts to account for gravitation by repulsion, 
that of Le Sage has attracted most attention, having gained a 
prominence in its way as Boscovich's atom and Thomson's vor- 
tex ring have in theirs. It is favorably mentioned by many 
great physicists, among them Tait and Maxwell. It accounts 
for gravitation by supposing a repulsive ether whose particles 
moving in every possible direction would be intercepted by 
bodies in space. The action of this force on such bodies would 
drive them toward one another precisely as they are supposed 
to be drawn by attraction. They would move toward the 
vacuum which their own mutual interception of the flying parti- 
cles would create. A kindred theory is conceived by Professor 
Walling, of Lafayette college. He attempts to account for the 
chemical and physical behavior of matter by supposing that force 
is independent of matter, but acts upon it in infinite lines mov- 
ing in every possible direction. According to these views, 
gravity and gravitation are resolved into a force which is essen- 
tially repulsive, for Le Sage's corpuscles and Waiting's infinite 
lines of force moving in every possible direction form a perfect 
system of antagonistic action, and correspond perfectly with the 
physicist's conception of the expansivity, elasticity, or repulsion, 
of gases. 

James Croll, the physicist and mathematician, states his view 
as follows: "Gravity in all probability is of the nature of an 



SeC. 43, ~\ BOSCOVICH AND BAYMA. 7 1 

impact or a pressure. Some of our most eminent physicists 
state that the force of gravity must either result from impact of 
ultramundane corpuscles, in some respects analogous to that of 
the particles of a gas (which has been found to be capable of 
accounting for gaseous pressure), or it must result from differ- 
ence of pressure in a substance continuously filling space, except 
where matter displaces it. That gravity is a force of the nature 
of pressure is, I think, beyond all doubt ; but that this pressure 
results from the impact of corpuscles, or from difference of pres- 
sure in a substance filling space, is purely hypothetical. Why 
not call it a force, without calling in the aid of corpuscles or a 
medium filling space?" This view and Professor Walling's are 
essentially the same. 

Section 43. — But it is doubtful if the supposition of a single 
primitive force from which attraction, gravitation, and all others 
are derived, does really compensate in simplicity for the theoreti- 
cal difficulties it involves. It has not the merit of being simple. 
Boscovich supposed both attraction and repulsion to belong to 
the original power-point, the one changing into the other accord- 
ing to the relation of the axis and the curve of force ; but the 
scheme is condemned by its obscurity and complexity. What- 
ever the supposition to begin with, whether vibrations, waves, 
flying corpuscles, lines of force, elastic ether, pressure, impact, 
attraction and repulsion immediately supervene as a necessary 
part of the problem. These must be primarily accounted for. 
Possibly we should gain in simplicity and clearness by the 
admission, to begin with, of two primary and antagonistic forces 
in nature. 

Bayma, from whom we have already quoted (section 38), 
believes it to be demonstrable that attraction and repulsion are 
not only the primary, but indeed the only properties of matter. 
He begins with points which are either wholly attractive or wholly 
repulsive, and with these original centers of force he proceeds 
to build up all the known forms of inorganic matter. He says: 
"No phenomenon has been observed anywhere in material things, 
which cannot proceed from the known powers of attraction and 



72 PRIMARY FORCES. \Chdp. VIII. 

repulsion; nay, it is positively certain that all phenomena pro- 
ceed from these same powers. For each material point, when 
acted on, can only change its place; and therefore, the effect of 
the action of matter upon matter is only local motion, one ele- 
ment approaching to, or retiring from the other. And this is 
precisely what attractive and repulsive powers are especially 
competent to do." — (Molecular Mechanics, p. 46). 

According to this philosopher, the power is the entity, or real 
thing that exists; what he calls matter is simply the power- 
center. "The matter is a point in space;" and this point is sur- 
rounded by an indefinite sphere of power which decreases in 
inverse ratio to the square of the distance. The point is not the 
source or generator of this sphere of power, but exists simply 
by virtue of it as its center. In maintaining that these power- 
centers, or " simple elements " are either wholly attractive or 
wholly repulsive, he differs from Boscovich, who regards attrac- 
tion and repulsion as possible forces of the same point. Out of 
the "simple elements," both attractive and repulsive, Bayma 
constructs his molecules, which possess extension, and " imply 
volume." These molecules being composed of elements of 
opposite forces may be repulsive at certain distances and attract- 
ive at others. The definition of a molecule, as for example, of 
hydrogen, is given in full as follows: "A molecule is a system 
of simple elements, or material points, constituted by a centre, 
a number of regular concentric polyhedric nuclei, and a regular 
polyhedric repulsive envelope, all indissolubly bound with one 
another by dynamical ties, and subject to a kind of palpitating 
motion by which they constantly contract and dilate with a sur- 
prising rapidity" (p. 7). 

The whole scheme is worked out with an imposing array of 
algebraic formulae. The author's positions may not be impreg- 
nable, especially that which assumes the exclusively attractive 
nature of the ether which fills the inter-planetary spaces. But 
as abstruse as the subject' is, and as abstract as this treatment 
of it is, it is nevertheless throughout suggestive; and it is 
here presented as one of the simplest views of the subject, and 



Sec. 43 .] BIRKS AND NORTON. 73 

one which brings out clearly the logical need of regarding attrac- 
tion and repulsion as necessary and original functions of mater- 
rial existence. 

Birks, who, as we have seen (section 38), takes the same gen- 
eral view of matter with Bayma, has wrought out quite a similar 
theory of its ultimate constitution and ultimate properties. Mat- 
ter, according to his theory, is constituted of points of attraction 
which obey the Newtonian law of inverse squares. But attrac- 
tion of itself does not account for cohesion, which he maintains 
is due to the pressure of ether as the embodiment of repulsive 
force in nature. He thus starts with the two forces ; the one of 
matter, attraction ; the other of ether, repulsion * and with them 
he proceeds to account for all the physical and chemical proper- 
ties of bodies (Matter and Ether). 

An earlier theory than those of Bayma and Birks is that of 
Professor Norton, of Harvard. According to this theory matter 
has three forms : First, that of ordinary or gross matter ; 
secondly, an electric ether which is attracted by common matter, 
but whose atoms repel one another ; thirdly, a luminiferous, or 
universal ether which pervades all space, is self-repulsive, but is 
attracted by ordinary matter. His conception of a molecule is 
that it consists of an atom of ponderable matter surrounded by 
atmospheres of these two forms of ether. He says : " The con- 
ception here formed of a molecule involves the idea of the oper- 
ation of the two forces of attraction and repulsion : a force of 
attraction is exerted by the atom upon each of the two atmos- 
pheres surrounding it; and a force of mutual repulsion between 
the atoms of each atmosphere. These we regard as the primary 
forces of nature, from which all known forces are derived." 
Again : "All the forces in nature are traceable to two primary 
forces, viz., attraction and repulsion." — (Stated by Bayma from 
Silliman's Journal). 

Original antagonism in the constitution of things is recom 
mended to the metaphysical, as well as to the physico-mathe- 
matical, mind, in its attempt to reach the primary forces of 
physical existence. This is shown by the elaborate system of 



74 PRIMARY FORCES. '[C/lOp. VIII. 

cosmology by S. P. Hickok, who makes great account of the 
"insight of reason" to penetrate the order of nature. A system 
of rational cosmology which has been "evolved from the depths 
of consciousness " by a mind untrained in physical science, 
would not be likely to receive much attention from trained 
physicists ; but it is referred to here for the general coincidence 
in its points with those which are in favor with the profoundest 
students of physical science. This theorist accounts not only 
for the dissolution of physical forms, but also for their construc- 
tion, by the play of antagonistic forces which he calls antago- 
nistic and diremptive. This combining agency is an antago- 
nistic force, without which matter could not exist. "But our 
thought-conception of a space-filling force as the true substantial 
matter involves the full conception of both statics and dynamics; 
counteraction in equilibrium must stand self-fixed. It is a force 
holding itself in its place." The author's idea of the original 
antagonism which forms the space-filling molecule and atom is 
that of two equal and counter pushes or pulsions toward a 
common point. It is not the pull of attraction from all sides 
that combines, but the pulsion or pressure from opposite direc- 
tions. His diremptive force is the precise opposite of this, 
being that which pushes asunder. The "antagonistic" is that 
"which works from opposite sides upon itself;" the "diremptive" 
is that "which outworks from itself on each side of the point 
of divellant action." With these two forms of "activity," which 
are the opposite of each other, and each of which is within 
itself an opposite tendency, he constructs his system of "rational 
cosmology." He builds up the universe out of counter forces. 
— (Rational Cosmology). 

G. H. Lewes, a general as well as scientific student, clearly 
states the view we entertain concerning the necessity of opposing 
forces in nature : " Beside the unity of force we must accept 
the diversity of opposing forces. Physics could not stir a step 
without its discrete atoms and opposing forces. The atoms are 
infintesimal masses [or forms of motion] ; both are discrete. A 



SeC. 43. ~\ ANTAGONIZING TENSION. 75 

single force could have no resultant, and produce no change." — ■ 
(Problems of Life and Mind, Third Series). 

Kant could not conceive of the existence of matter apart 
from the two properties of attraction and repulsion. But with 
these properties in hand he proceeded to build up a scheme of 
the universe, afterwards independently worked out by Laplace, 
— the nebular hypothesis. 

The following is a somewhat technical statement of the theo- 
retical necessity of antagonizing tensions in matter : " It may 
be well to affirm with some positiveness that without the cease- 
less co-operation of two antagonizing, or reciprocating statical 
tensions, a mechanical theory of heat is rationally impossible. 
Matter possessing only inertia and motion (whose product is 
momentum) would speedily arrive at a state of stable and inert 
equilibrium, without having ever exhibited a single phenomenon 
of force, and without the possibility of any dynamic potential. 
All gases would, under the operation of the first 
law of motion, tend to infinite and equable diffusion; and liquids 
and solids would quickly follow in their wake. Heat, whether 
considered as a vibration or a revolution (or preferable, as both 
a rectilinear and an orbital movement), could of course have no 
existence, since there could be neither recoil nor constraining 
bond; and the very first step toward an oscillation would also be 
the last one. Even the principle itself of * conservation of 
force ' is absolutely dependent on the existence of primordial 
static protentiality." — (William B. Taylor.) According to the 
doctrine of conservation, energy is a constant quantity which 
changes form without loss or gain. This obviously suggests that 
the universe is a system of balancing forces — a universal strain 
in opposite directions, with the lines of stress constantly chang- 
ing. This strain or compensating tendency is clearly necessary 
to maintain the integrity of the correlation and conservation of 
energy. 

The author last quoted does not believe that any attempt to 
explain gravitation has been successful. This universal attrac- 
tion is itself a function of nature so primal that the human mind 



76 PRIMARY FORCES. \Chap. VIII. 

has not yet succeeded in resolving it into simpler known ele- 
ments. A similar view is taken by J. Clerk Maxwell. In his 
article on Attraction, in the new edition of the Encyclopaedia 
Brittannica, he instances three hypotheses to account for gravita- 
tion: i. — The corpuscular theory of Le Sage. 2. — Robert 
Hooke's theory of waves in a medium; Professor Walling hav- 
ing presented a modification of this theory, and Professor 
Challis having improved upon it by his suggestion concerning 
the "effect of waves of condensation and rarefaction in an elastic 
fluid on bodies immersed in the fluid." 3. — Sir William Thom- 
son's view, showing how attraction and repulsion might take 
place between bodies by the emission or absorption of an incom- 
pressible fluid which fills all space. But he regards none of 
these theories as satisfactory; they add nothing to our knowl- 
edge of the real forces of nature; and we gain in simplicity by 
regarding attraction and repulsion as ultimate facts which admit 
of no explanation. 

Section 44. — If attraction and repulsion, as these philoso- 
phers and students of nature think, are to be regarded as prop- 
erly the primary forces of matter, we should no doubt be 
authorized to carry them back to the beginning and install them as 
the prim i tive forces of phenomenal existence. If these appear 
to discerning minds as the leading or only forces in nature when 
its phenomena are so diversified as at present, still more obvi- 
ously would they appear as such in the nebulous form of the 
worlds. What precisely were the active forces of matter in the 
state of diffusion such as the nebular hypothesis supposes, we 
are not able perhaps fully to say. We can only judge of such a 
thing by what we may know from our own experience of matter 
in the highest known degree of diffusion. What were not there 
even, we do not positively know. There might have been dis- 
cord, but there was no pain; there might have been harmony, 
but there was no pleasure. We should expect no manifestation 
of individualized mind, no animal or vegetable life, no sensibility, 
no crystallization, no cohesion of any kind, no chemical union, 
but only atomic dissociation. 



Sec. 44.] CONFLICT OF FORCES PRIMARY. 77 

On the other hand, we should expect the presence of gravita- 
tion, every atom attracting every other atom, and the entire mass 
drawn toward the common centre. The extreme tenuity and 
diffusion supposed involves the presence of heat having an 
intensity beyond anything within our experience. The preva- 
lence of such heat implies other things. There was that condi- 
tion of matter which the eye interprets as light — the nebulae are 
self-luminous. There was motion — heat is motion, and the 
intenser the heat the greater the motion. As an inevitable accom- 
paniment of the heat there were expansion and elasticity ; and 
these imply repulsion. The heat-motion, the expansion and 
elasticity, are best summed up in the idea of repulsion. Besides 
the motion of particles there was no doubt the motion of masses, 
such as is now witnessed on a greatly reduced scale in the sun. 
The phenomena of nebulous existence are divided between the 
action of two antagonistic forces : Repulsion, which sustains the 
diffusion of the mass, and which would send its volume 
immensely further into space, but for attraction, which binds the 
mass together, and which, but for repulsion, would draw it into a 
compact mass at the centre. Nay, we cannot say what would 
be the condition of matter without repulsion; possibly, it is 
necessary to its existence. In the most primitive form in which 
we can conceive of cosmical existence, we find the antagonistic 
powers of attraction and repulsion in possession of the entire 
field of operations.. Thus we are met at the very threshold of 
our inquiry with the conflict of opposing powers. We are not 
able to conceive of this original seed-plot of worlds apart from 
the strife of forces. There is conflict in this germ of life to 
come; and conflict may be necessary to existence itself. 

The nearest approach that can be made to the conception of 
a unitary primal force, is to regard it as dual in character, involv- 
ing the perpetual union of counter forces. Something like this 
is the view of the geometer, G. Lame, who believes that while 
"the function of elasticity [repulsion] in nature is at least as 
important as of universal gravitation," "gravitation and elasticity 
should be considered as effects of the same cause, which cor- 
5 



78 PRIMARY forces. \Chap. VIIL 

relate or connect all the material parts of the universe." Per- 
haps we might regard attraction and repulsion as Plato regarded 
pleasure and pain, as "united from one head." 

Section 45. — In the nebulous mass of which worlds were 
born, certain initial changes took place. These were dependent 
solely on the mutual action of the two opposing forces, the 
attractive and repulsive. The sum of repulsion in the system 
would suffer loss by the radiation of heat, and attraction would 
draw the attenuated mass more closely together. This loss of 
repulsive energy would be in a sense, the cause of whatever 
changes might result from attraction. As the sum of attractive 
energy would not diminish, it would constantly gain in relative 
value over that of repulsion. Accompanying this, many other 
changes would be successively inaugurated; but since this part of 
our subject is so purely speculative, we shall pass on to that stage 
when planets had been evolved and were on their journeys round 
the sun. As the motion of masses is convertible into heat, all 
planetary motion may be regarded as the equivalent of heat. 
The tangential motion of the masses of planets keeps them 
from falling into the sun, by antagonizing the action of gravita- 
tion. This tangential motion is the equivalent of heat or atomic 
motion ; but heat is a form of repulsion or inseparably bound 
up with it; and repulsion antagonizes attraction. In the present 
status of the solar system, the tangential motion of the planets 
antagonizes attraction, and keeps the planetary masses away 
from the center of the system ; but if the planets should stop 
on their axes and in their orbits and fall into the sun, the con- 
version of their molar motion into molecular motion (heat) 
would dissipate them into vapor, and the repulsive energy thus 
developed would still keep the masses of matter away from the 
center of the system. In this case the result would be due to 
the direct antagonism of repulsion to attraction; in the present 
status of the system, it is due to the antagonism of tangential 
motion of masses to the attraction of masses; such motion 
being equivalent, in the one case, to the repulsion of particles 
in the other. 



Sec. 46.] lockyer's theory. 79 

We know nothing, from our experience, either of the creation 
or the annihilation of force. The entire sum of it in existence 
within the range of observation is always the same. It may 
undergo change from one form into another, but in so changing, 
it neither gains nor loses. The original sum of heat and other 
forms of motion in our system, may now be inventoried under 
the heads : That which has radiated into space, and is outside 
the system; that which exists in the form of planetary motion; 
and .that which is still active as heat or some form of its equiva- 
lent mostly in or near the sun, planets and satellites. With the 
last only have we anything at present to do in following the 
course of evolution. 

Section 46. — In the nebulous state of our system, under the 
extreme attenuation which then existed, there could have been 
little or no diversity in the active properties of different kinds of 
matter. The several properties which characterize the different 
elementary substances as we know them were practically non- 
existent. The spectroscope appears to reveal the fact that the 
spectrum of certain stars is simpler than that of others, con- 
taining the lines only of three elements, hydrogen, calcium, 
and magnesium. These stars are believed to be the hottest. 
Hydrogen, nitrogen, and an unknown gas have been detected 
in nebulae. Perhaps, as Lockyer's theory supposes, if the heat 
was sufficient, some one form alone of elementary substance 
would appear as the ultimate form of material existence. Great 
heat or great attenuation by whatever caused would appear 
to be incompatible with the existence of most so-called ele- 
mentary substances. The effect of cooling and condensation 
would be to enable these elementary forms gradually to emerge; 
and as matter passed through the gaseous and liquid forms to 
the solid, its properties would steadily increase in number and 
variety. A passage from Faraday (quoted by Professor Crookes, 
Nature, August 28, 1879) illustrates this subject, beginning, 
however, with solid matter and following it through its changes 
of form and properties: 

" As we ascend from the solid to the fluid and gaseous states, 



8o PRIMARY FORCES. [Chap. VIII. 

physical properties diminish in number and variety, each state 
losing some of those which belonged to the preceding state. 
When solids are converted into fluids, all the varieties of hard- 
ness and softness are necessarily lost. Crystalline and other 
shapes are destroyed. Opacity and color frequently give way to 
a colorless transparency, and a general mobility of particles is 
conferred. Passing onward to the gaseous state, still more of 
the evident characters of bodies are annihilated. The immense 
differences in their weight almost disappear; the remains of dif- 
ference in color that were left are lost. Transparency becomes 
universal, and they are all elastic. They now form but one set 
of substances, and the varieties of density, hardness, opacity, 
color, elasticity, and form, which render the number of solids 
and fluids almost infinite, are now supplied by a few slight 
variations in weight, and some unimportant shades of color." 
Professor Crookes has shown that, in radiant matter (extremely 
attenuated gas), the physical properties of different substances 
are identical. 

With sufficient cooling, our globe would assume the liquid 
form under the action of chemical and physical forces. It would 
then exhibit properties which belong to liquid substances. With 
further contraction, cohesion and adhesion come into play, and 
solid substances are formed. Minerals come into existence. 
An atmosphere surrounds the planet, and oceans cover the sur- 
face. Matter differentiates and new forms of it appear. Crys- 
talization takes place as the harbinger of organization. Colloidal 
substances are at length developed; the simplest forms of life 
emerge into existence, and become more and more complicated 
through vegetable and animal elaboration, till man appears, the 
highest individualized existence of which we have any experi- 
mental knowledge. 

Cohesion did not exist in the nebular form of matter, and 
when it was manifested, it was no special creation of a new 
force, but the modified manifestation of a force already in exist- 
ence. It was the result of attraction or gravitation — pressure 
under the atmosphere and other superincumbent masses — made 



Sec. 46.] ACTION AND LIFE DUAL. 8 1 

possible through the reduction of repulsion by the loss of heat. 
The same is not so obvious of adhesion and chemical affinity ; 
but even these are forms of attraction which could become 
operative only through the loss of repulsion. Gases do not 
readily combine; it often requires pressure and other devices 
to enable them to do so. Solids rarely act upon each other in 
a chemical way. Most chemical actions take place in solutions 
in which the atoms are free to move among one another and 
near enough to be subject to mutual influence. Crystallization 
takes place most readily from liquids. All these activities con- 
note the presence of the requisite mean of heat, expansion, and 
repulsion. There can be no organization but in the presence 
of a comparatively small range of temperature. For this reason, 
in the early stage of the planet's existence, the loss of heat (and 
with it of light) was necessary to render organization possible 
on the planet, but when this condition was attained, organization 
was not possible without receiving motion in the form of light 
and heat from the sun. Owing to planetary rotation there was 
diurnal variation in temperature with the alternation of light 
and darkness, conditions of most forms of animated existence 
with which we are acquainted, and of all the higher. Motion 
adequate to the ends of organization has been conserved to our 
system by its central luminary, notwithstanding the loss of it in 
some of the surrounding planets. The sun radiates heat, light, 
and actinism on the earth ; the sun gives, the earth receives — a 
form of duality in which the sun becomes the generator and the 
planet the mother to bring forth organization and life. Now, 
all life, all phenomena of whatever kind, are ultimately resolved 
into active forces, into motion, and all motion is alternating, 
rhythmical, dual. All present phenomena depend on present 
forces, and these are all derived from the forces in the primitive 
nebula in which their simple form was that of attraction and 
repulsion, or what was substantially their equivalent. 

Notes. — 1. Of late the nebular hypothesis has fallen into a somewhat dis- 
turbed condition, and it would be quite impossible to make a statement like the 
preceding so general as not to conflict with some of the modifications. But, of 



82 CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. [Chap. IX. 

course, all the emendations assume the substantial truth of the theory ; only 
Stallo has attacked it apparently with intent to kill. 2. The quotations and 
statements in the preceding chapter, on the views of Newton, Young, Glennie, 
Croll, Lame\ and Taylor, are taken from an article on Kinetic Theories of 
Gravitation, by William B. Taylor, in the Smithsonian Report of 1876. An 
account of LeSage's theory is found both in Taylor's article and in Tait's 
Recent Advances in Physical Science; that of Walling in a number of the 
Record of Science. The sources of the others are indicated in the text. 



CHAPTER IX. 

CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. 

Section 47. — The behavior of the forces as made known by 
the sciences of physics and chemistry, goes to confirm the doc- 
trine of an original antagonism in the constitution of things 
with attraction and repulsion as primary and prevailing properties 
of matter. 

Chemical attraction and the strife of elementary atoms which 
results from it, and which might be called competitive affinity, 
are the leading facts with which chemistry has to deal. The 
molecule is defined to be the smallest particle of a substance 
which can exist and still retain its identity. The smallest par- 
ticle with which chemistry deals is the atom. Atoms combine 
to form molecules, and this is true of elementary as well as of 
compound substances. In compound substances the atoms are 
unlike, in elementary substances they are held to be of the same 
kind. But it is doubtful if even here there is absolute homo- 
geneity. The atom is not at all a perfectly rounded, isolated, 
and independent thing of itself. It has relations, and relations 
cannot exist without differences and contrasts. It is a property 
of the individual atom to combine with another atom even of its 
own kind. Thus two atoms of hydrogen unite to form a mole- 



Sec. 48.] ATOMIC POLARITY. 83 

cule of hydrogen; the same is true of chlorine; but if the two 
elements are brought in contact, the atoms forming the hydrogen 
molecule separate, while the chlorine atoms behave in like man- 
ner, and the atoms of hydrogen uniting with an equal number 
of chlorine atoms form hydrochloric acid. Hydrogen gas does 
not exist in an atomic condition as simply H, but it is formed of 
molecules consisting of two atoms each, H-H. The same is 
true of oxygen, O-O. But while the hydrogen atom only unites 
with one atom of another element to form new compounds, the 
oxygen atom unites with two. The " valency " of the carbon 
atom is still greater; it unites with four atoms of other elements 
to form its compounds. It is owing to this property of the 
carbon atom — "the affinity of carbon for carbon" — that it 
enters into such a variety of compounds, and becomes the ruling 
element in organic chemistry (Wurtz). Thus we must regard 
the atom itself, not as an integral unit homogeneous throughout, 
but as polar in constitution with attractions for other polar units. 
Judged by known analogies, atoms must be in some sense, of 
unlike or opposite character, else they would not have the 
properties of " affinity " and " atomicity," whereby they unite 
together. The molecules of different elements may enter into 
chemical union with each other, not by virtue, however, of their 
molecular properties, but, as now interpreted on high authority, 
by virtue of their atomic properties. The unlike, polar, or what- 
ever property it may be in consequence of which the union takes 
place, resides wholly in the atoms. Certain atoms in the mole- 
cules, and not the molecules acting as units, exercise the mutual 
attraction necessary to the chemical union. Thus at the very 
deepest point to which it has been possible to pursue the mys- 
teries of the constitution of bodies — the atom — heterogeneity in 
the form of opposition or contrast is identified. But even if 
molecules enter into combination as chemical units, as able 
chemists still hold, none the less is this heterogeneity or polarity 
present in the chemical constitution of bodies. 

Section 48. — Chemical reactions in which one chemical atom 
or molecule replaces another present complications of inter- 



84 CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. [Chap. IX. 

change so diversified that no adequate conception of them can 
be given in few words. From our point of view, we might char- 
acterize these reactions as the strife of atoms and molecules to 
supplant, or take the place of, one another. Chemical changes 
to a very large extent may be regarded as the contest of chem- 
ical units for place and precedence. It is not necessary for our 
purpose to illustrate so familiar a subject by examples, since these 
may be found in abundance in works on chemistry, as elective 
decomposition and recomposition, or elective affinity, simple and 
compound. 

Section 49. — The energy with which atoms and molecules 
unite to form compounds depends primarily on the relative 
character of such atoms and molecules. The more unlike these 
are — the greater the contrast in their sensible qualities — the 
greater as a rule is their affinity for one another, uniting with 
greater avidity, and being separated with greater difficulty, 
"The opposition of properties is the cause of the chemical 
affinity," and "the more complete the opposition of properties 
may be, the more intense is the affinity by virtue of which com- 
bination is effected." — (Kane.) Oxygen and chlorine in combina- 
tion with the metals, acids with the bases, with the alkalies, are 
examples of great contrast in the qualities of the substances, and 
great energy in combination. And the resulting compounds are 
not a union of the qualities of the substances combined; are not 
like either, but totally unlike both, thus contributing to the 
diversity of material existence. 

Section 50. — The leading forms in which attraction manifests 
itself in the phenomenal world are: First, that of gravitation, or 
that which obtains between masses (physical) ; secondly, that of 
cohesion between like atoms or molecules (chemico-physical); 
and thirdly, that of affinity between unlike atoms and molecules 
(chemical). While gravitation has no direct form of antagonism 
it is nevertheless met by many indirect forms of it. The planets 
are held to their orbits against the force of attraction by the 
incessant strain of planetary movement to proceed in a straight 
line. In the formation of vapor by the sun, the molecular 



Sec. 51.] ATOMIC DISSOCIATION. 85 

attraction of cohesion is overcome to be resumed on condensa- 
tion ; so that this antithetical phenomenon of the rise of vapor 
and the fall of rain does not take place without the concurrent 
struggle of attractive and repulsive forces, although in the rise of 
the vapor the antagonism to gravity is indirect in its method 
rather than direct. 

Motion in the form of heat — separative or repulsive motion — 
is the great antagonist of cohesion and chemical attraction. 
The homogeneous metal first expands, then melts, and is finally 
dissipated into vapor by the absorption of heat. The most 
refractory compounds are decomposed by the intense heat of 
the compound blow-pipe and of the electrical current. But for 
this same repulsive energy, gravity would force all substances 
into a compact mass, and there would be an end to the succes- 
sion of phenomena. 

Section 51. — The energy of chemical attraction is a matter 
of curious interest on account of the various antithetical forms 
under which it may be made to appear. While two unlike atoms 
are still in isolation, they may be regarded as containing a fund 
of energy which can only be manifested by entering into chemi- 
cal union. In view of their mutual relations they may be 
regarded as polar, as positive and negative, which on sufficient 
nearness of approach under proper conditions are united 
together by mutual attraction. The power which is in some 
way or other inherent in the nature of the atoms before union, 
may be denominated the energy of atomic dissociation. We 
should have no a priori conception of the existence of this 
energy ; we only know of the marvel because it has been 
revealed by the phenomena of chemical combination and 
decomposition. When chemical union is taking place the 
energy of atomic dissociation is manifested in a sensible form, 
usually as heat. Under ordinary circumstances the union of 
dilute sulphuric acid and zinc generates heat, but in the cell of 
the galvanic battery, with the collocations there provided, such 
union of acid and zinc generates a current of electricity. What- 
ever the product, there is nothing like creation in either case ; it 



86 CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. [Chap. IX. 

is only a change in the form of the energy by which it becomes 
revealed to the senses as heat or as electricity. If the electrical 
current be made to pass through water it decomposes the liquid 
into its elements, oxygen and hydrogen; and while the electrical 
current thus disappears, the energy of atomic dissociation reap- 
pears in the separated elements of the water. And this energy 
is shown to be very great ; that which is necessary to decompose 
a pound of water would lift more than five million pounds one 
foot high. Faraday is often quoted for the fact that the elec- 
tricity which disappears in decomposing a grain of water is 
equivalent to a flash of lightning in a thirty-five-acre cloud. 
The instantaneous union of oxygen and hydrogen to form a 
very small drop of water is attended with a deafening report ; 
when slowly burned in the compound blow-pipe their union to 
form water is attended with intense heat. In the explosion of 
dissociated oxygen and hydrogen to form water there is collapse; 
in the explosion of gunpowder there is sudden expansion. 
When gunpowder explodes it is the result of the chemical union 
of molecules ; when nitro-glycerine explodes it is supposed to 
be due to the direct union of atoms ; and atomic dissociation is 
so much more complete than molecular dissociation, that the 
union is more sudden, the volume more largely increased, and 
the violence of combination greater (Cooke). The energy of 
atomic dissociation is in this instance transformed, not into heat 
or electricity wholly, but into an expansive force which is irre- 
sistible. The violence of volcanoes and earthquakes is probably 
in part due to the repulsive energy which is generated in the 
interior of the earth by chemical changes. There is no doubt 
that, in the processes of nature as well as in those of art, 
the energy of atomic dissociation is transformed by chemical 
union into the energy of expansion, when we have the paradox 
that chemical attraction may generate physical repulsion with 
manifestations of extreme violence. Atomic dissociation con- 
stitutes an immense fund of working energy on our planet, of 
which the familiar forms of food and fuel are conspicuous 
examples. 



Sec. SJ-] ELASTICITY OF GASES. 87 

Section 52. — The atom is never at rest. Even in apparently 
the most quiescent solids, and in bodies subjected to the lowest 
known temperature, there is constant action in their atomic and 
molecular constituents. In fluids the motion is still greater; in 
gases it is greatest, and the more the gas or vapor is heated, the 
greater is the energy with which atomic movement goes on. 
Bodies exist in different states, whether as solid, liquid, or gase- 
ous, in consequence of the relative degrees with which their 
"corpuscles" are affected by the antagonistic forces of attraction 
and repulsion. — (Davy and others). According to the law of 
Avogadro, equal volumes of gases or vapors, simple or compound, 
contain equal numbers of atoms, pressure and temperature being 
the same, no matter how different their specific gravity may be. 
The relative weights of equal volumes of different gases is in 
proportion to the relative weight of their atomic constituents. 
If a cubic inch of oxygen is sixteen times heavier than a cubic 
inch of hydrogen, the oxygen atom weighs sixteen times heavier 
than the hydrogen atom. 

Section 53. — The leading property of gases is their elasticity, 
the tendency to resist the limits to which they are confined. 
No gas keeps the precise limit of volume it may have, except by 
the compulsion of a force which acts in opposition to its struggle 
ever more to expand. It always fills the room allotted it, and 
many gases may occupy the same space by diffusion into one 
another, each one of them filling the space very much as if none 
of the others were present. The volume of any gas is, by the 
law of Boyle, in inverse proportion to the pressure to which it is 
submitted; — there are, however, slight variations from this law. 
Again, the volume of any gas is by the law of Charles, in direct 
proportion to the temperature. That is, reckoning from the 
absolute zero 273 below freezing, the volume of gas at freezing 
would be just half as great as at 273 above. 

Physicists agree that in gases and vapors the atoms or particles 
are flying about with great rapidity, and in every possible direc- 
tion, striking against one another, and against the walls of the 
vessel in which they are confined. It is in this way that their 



88 CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. [Chap. IX. 

elasticity is accounted for. When the volume is reduced by 
pressure, the atoms have less distance to go before impinging 
upon one another, and upon the sides of the vessel, their con- 
tact is more frequent, and consequently, the resistance to con- 
finement is greater than when the same number of particles 
occupy more space under less pressure. The expansive force of 
gases increases with the increment of heat, owing to the greater 
activity of the moving particles, in consequence of which they 
strike one another and the walls of the vessel with greater 
frequency and force. And since the resistance to pressure is the 
same for all gases under like conditions of heat and pressure, 
and since the number of their atoms is equal while their weight 
is different, the lighter atoms must make up in vigor of motion 
what they lack in mass in order to maintain the same degree of 
expansive force. It is calculated that at the temperature of 
freezing and under the ordinary pressure of the atmosphere, the 
atom of hydrogen moves at the rate of about seventy miles per 
minute, in which time it comes in contact with other atoms about 
1,062,000,000 times! Thus we may look upon every ounce of 
air, of vapor, of the gaseous form of any substance, as the 
theatre of Liliputian warfare in which mutual blows are liberally 
given; and yet both in art and in nature this conflict of invisible 
atoms is attended with results which are truly gigantic. Steam 
is a . mighty and pliant servant if properly managed ; if not so 
managed, it becomes a remorseless agent of mischief. 

[I am aware that the able author of "Modern Physics" has 
attacked the kinetic theory of gases with a number of other 
concepts and theories current among physicists. While it is 
probable that physicists do not, so much as he represents, regard 
their concepts as identical with things, yet he appears somewhat 
to have shattered the current mechanical, framework of modern 
physics. But after all, this subject is very much entangled with 
the uncertainty of terms and their meanings, and we think that 
the disputants pro and con are very liable to lose the thread of 
strict logical consistency. I wish it to be understood that the 
statements of this and the two preceding chapters have been 



Sec. S4-\ CONTRAST NECESSARY TO PROPULSION. 89 

made on authority mainly. Only a professed physicist could 
present these subjects with the authority of an original]. 

Section 54. — When a solid becomes a liquid, a large quantity 
of heat assumes a form which is not cognizable by the senses. 
It does not therefore pass out of existence; it is still a form 
of energy, now exerted to keep the particles asunder so that 
they may move among one another. When a liquid passes into 
a gaseous condition, a still larger quantity of heat becomes 
imperceptible, and the particles of gas are thrust still farther 
asunder. There is now a great amount of atomic motion, 
which, by suitable arrangements may be converted into the 
motion of masses. Machinery is made to move by the expan- 
sive power of steam. An absolute condition of such trans- 
formation of motion is that the point at which motion is com- 
municated shall be colder than the point from which such motion 
emanates. The steam in the boiler must be hotter than when 
it reaches the condenser. It cannot move the piston except by 
losing a part of its heat ; consequently, if the cylinder and the 
surrounding atmosphere are as hot as the steam when it reaches 
the piston, there can be no communication of motion, and 
upon opening the throttle-valve the machinery would respond 
only by continuing to stand perfectly still. Heat being equal at 
all points inside and outside the chambers, repulsion would be 
equal and opposite on the two faces of the piston. Modern 
civilization rests on the fact that great inequality of temperature 
may be produced whereby the repulsive force of a common-place 
vapor may be greater in one direction than in another, and thus 
be made a propulsive force available for the great ends of indus- 
try and commerce. Work is obtained out of that form of 
motion which we call heat by accumulating a "head" of it, so 
that it shall act with greater force for the time being on one end 
of the piston than on the other; just as on the hypothesis of 
LeSage, Walling, and Croll (section 42) concerning infinite lines 
of force moving in all possible directions, the work of gravitation 
takes place by the interception of those lines, in consequence of 
which, the impelling force acts with greater energy on one side 



go CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. [C/lOp. IX. 

of the planet than on the other. In the compressed-air engine 
used in the tunnel of St. Gothard, there is an accumulated head of 
force in the reservoir of compressed air which is thence delivered 
where there is no such accumulation, and where work may be and 
is done. The point from which the working power emanates — 
the reservoir — and that at which it acts — the cylinder — stand in 
the relation to each other of plus and minus (March, 1877). 
There can be no work done without heterogeneity — without 
unlike conditions, without opposite states, answering to plus and 
minus or positive and negative. 

Section 55. — The leading conception of mechanics is the use 
of power by means of machinery to overcome resistance. With- 
out the conception of antagonistic forces there could be no phi- 
losophy of mechanics; without the means of overcoming resist- 
ance there could be no practical mechanics. Is there a weight 
to lift from a lower to a higher level, or to remove from one 
place to another, or a product of the earth, or an object in 
nature, to put in form for the uses of life? To these ends we 
have the "mechanical powers," — the lever, the wheel and axle, 
the pully, the inclined plane, the wedge, and the screw, with all 
the manifold forms of machinery into which these enter. It is 
the function of the vehicle on the highway, of the train on the 
steel rail, of the ship on the river or the sea, of the plow that 
turns the soil, of the one machine that harvests the grain and 
the other that threshes it, and the mill that grinds it, of the tool 
or the machine which shapes the fabric of whatever kind, — it is 
the function of all these to overcome resistance. The round of 
changes by which the lump of ore is transformed into a thing of 
use, or that by which the stone is lifted from the quarry, put into 
shape, and laid to its place in the wall, or wrought into marvel- 
ous shapes of beauty, — all these operations are so many forms of 
the encounter of opposing forces in which the principle of New- 
ton's third law of motion holds good, that "to every action there 
is an equal and opposite reaction." 

Section 56. — Polarity is a term which has been used even by 
scientific men with considerable of latitude. Its character is best 



SeC. 56. \ POLARITY. 91 

shown in magnetism and electricity. Here there are two actions 
called positive and negative which are equal and opposite; and 
they always accompany each other as "if they were united from 
the same head." Faraday exhausted his resources of experiment 
to charge bodies with absolute magnetism, that is, of one kind 
without the presence of the other, but without avail. This is a 
magnetic condition which it is not possible to bring about, and 
it is one which never exists. Like poles repel, unlike poles 
attract. The positive is not merely indifferent to positive, or 
negative to negative; they absolutely and always repel. This 
mutual repulsion of like, and the mutual attraction of unlike is 
the most pronounced form of polar phenomena. Chemical 
attraction is in some respects so like electrical attraction as to 
be suggestive of polar relations. Professor Cooke states that 
chemical affinity "is a manifestation of a molecular condition 
which we may distinguish as chemical polarity." But here like 
atoms do not repel; in crystallization they even attract one 
another. In cohesion and in crystallization the attraction may 
be regarded as polar in its character, in some such sense as the 
elementary molecule is polar when it consists of two halves or 
atoms coupled together as one. But in chemical reactions unlike 
atoms attract each other as the unlike poles of the magnet, or 
as objects in opposite electrical states. In such electrified 
objects, however, the degrees of attraction vary only according 
to a uniform scale, while in atomic attraction or chemical affinity 
each combination has its own measure of power; and we may 
assume that the more distinctively opposite in character the 
atoms are, the greater is the attraction of one for the other. It 
is held "that the chemical activity of a substance depends on 
the degree of polarity inherent in its molecules" — (Cooke). The 
term polarity is applied to light in a sense somewhat different 
still. A ray of light direct from the sun may be regarded as a 
thread with pulsations filling the thread to roundness ; but when 
this ray has passed through tourmaline, the vibrations take place 
only in one plane, and the thread is no longer round but flat; 
light is then said to be polarized. 



92 CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. [Chap. IX. 

In isomorphism different elements and compounds crystallize 
in identical forms; in dimorphism the same substance crys- 
tallizes in two unlike forms; in isomerism compounds of differ- 
ent sensible qualities contain precisely the same elements in the 
same proportions. Perfumes, which are very unlike, may have 
the same elementary constitution. Protein exists in upward of 
a thousand isomeric forms — (Cazelles). In allotropism the same 
elements assume different properties, as in the familiar example 
of oxygen and ozone. In all these instances of isomorphism, 
dimorphism, isomerism, and allotropism, the behavior of the 
atoms or molecules is suggestive of the presence of polarity. 

The relation of polar phenomena in chemistry and in elec- 
tricity is aptly shown by the production of the electrical current 
in the galvanic battery, and the action of that current on chem- 
ical compounds. Thus, as has already been stated, the current 
is generated by chemical combination in the cell, and thence 
passes along the conducting wire, and may end in the decom- 
position of water. In the act of combination, we may infer that 
a polar force is liberated in the form of a current which consists 
of two lines of force passing in opposite directions, and that this 
current when it enters the water changes into the polar energy of 
the separated atoms of oxygen and hydrogen. The two lines of 
force equal and opposite along the electrical track through the 
water are explained by the theory that, like two files of soldiers 
marching elbow to elbow, and step by step, in opposite directions, 
the atoms of oxygen and hydrogen slip by one another moving 
in two lines, the oxygen to the positive pole and the hydrogen 
to the negative pole, and deliver themselves an atom at a time 
endowed with the polar energy of separation — energy which is 
equivalent to and identical with that which the uncombined acid 
and zinc had at the commencement of the process. 

Section 57. — It may well be said that there is a tendency in 
nature for active forces to assume dualistic, polar, or opposite 
forms of manifestation. The princhple goes down deep into the 
constitution of things, impresses itself on the original sources of 
energy, and rules as a leading element in the phenomenal world 



Sec. S7-] DISGUISED POLARITY. 93 

Physicists tell us that the universe is a machine worked by ade- 
quate powers; and in the working, we find the equality of action 
and reaction, polarity with equal and opposite properties, attrac- 
tion and repulsion, giving character to the constitution of bodies 
as well as to the manifestations of force. It is difficult to escape 
the conviction that the entire system of nature is compounded 
of the action of opposites, which in the aggregate balance each 
other. All phenomena are but transformations of energy, one 
body giving, another receiving. And we may add that in these 
transformations some form of polarity, contrast, or opposition 
enters as a prevailing feature. This is true of all the great cycles 
of movement and change in the physical world, which make 
life possible on earth. It lies obscurely even in forms and move- 
ments in which we should scarcely suspect it. 

Take the single example of rotary motion so much used in 
mechanics, and so apt to spring up in phenomenal activities. 
The polar action of electrical currents and of magnets may be 
placed in such relations to each other as to produce rotary 
motion, the conducting wire revolving around the magnet, or 
the magnet around the conducting wire. By the proper arrange- 
ment of machinery, forward and backward motion is readily 
changed into circular motion, and the play of the piston may be 
changed into the whir of a thousand wheels. Suspend a ball 
by a string and start it with a pendulum motion; it is no great 
step from the direct movement back and forth in the same plane 
to a divergence on each side of this plane so as to form an 
ellipse with an extreme difference between the lengths of the 
axes; and as this axial difference is diminished, the elliptical 
orbit approaches the circle. . During the oscillation of the ball 
in the same plane, the extremities of the arc described might be 
regarded as the poles of motion; with divergence to form an 
elliptical orbit, the poles would still be at the extremities of the 
longer axis; and when the orbit should become a circle, the 
polarity would be so obscured that any two points at which the 
circle would be cut into equal parts, might be assumed as the 
poles. In the first action of the ball it is counter-movement 



94 CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. [Chap. IX. 

first one way and then the other; the counter movement is still 
obvious enough in the ellipse, and though obscured in the circle, 
it is still certainly there. Long ago Democritus derived rotary 
motion from impulse and reaction. 

The tipping of a vessel partly filled with liquid back and 
forth with only a slight variation from the direct line of move- 
ment, readily converts the motion of the contents into a vortex. 
A current meeting with obstruction, or two currents meeting 
each other are very apt to set up vortical movement. Pulver- 
ized indigo, charcoal, or carmine in water keeps up constant 
movement, mostly vibratory ; and when very fine, the particles 
not only vibrate, but manifest irregular axial rotation. — (Popular 
Science Monthly, October, 1877, p. 657). 

Now, even if the vortex atom or ring be received as the ultimate 
element of matter, still we do not get rid of dual and antagonistic 
action as the ground work of phenomena. Any motion of the 
kind, whether it be in a closed ring or an open spiral, involves 
counter movement without which the phenomenon could not 
take place. In the cylinder of the engine, the power acts in a 
straight line driving the piston back and forth. The rim of the 
balance wheel involves a similar antagonism of movement, find- 
ing limit at the end of any diameter assumed, and thence 
returning, not like the piston in a direct line, but in a curve to 
reach the opposite limit. While the one moves in a straight 
line, the other moves in curves on either side of such line ; but 
the movement is substantially as antagonistic in the one case 
as in the other. The vortex motion of Helmholtz and Thom- 
son involves antagonistic action as surely as the atom of Bos- 
covich, Bayma, or any of the others, however obviously such 
atom be endowed with original attraction and repulsion, and 
however much these properties may be obscured in the vortex 
ring. 

Section 58. — The principal sources from which working 
power is drawn are: 1, fuel; 2, food; 3, the wind; 4, streams 
of water; and all these are due to the action of opposing 
forces. By chemical combination with oxygen fuel gives off 



Sec. 58.] SOURCES OF WORKING POWER. 95 

heat, and thence is obtained the power which heat affords. The 
motion which proceeds from the fire is communicated to the 
water and forces asunder its molecules, converting it into steam. 
Heat maintains the expansive tension — the repulsion of the par- 
ticles of vapor — which is communicated by suitable arrange- 
ments to the propulsion of machinery. A large part of the 
industries of civilization are dependent on the energy of the dis- 
sociated carbon and hydrogen of fuel. Food is of similar char- 
acter. The complex compounds which constitute food are held 
together by feeble affinity, and in course of the digestive pro- 
cess, the elements they contain readily fall into simpler and more 
permanent combinations, and a large amount of force is set free 
which the animal economy utilizes for locomotion and for all 
functional activities. Food is partly burned in the lungs and 
produces heat. Fuel and food are both of vegetable origin, and 
the vegetable is a medium of power with equal and opposite 
chemical reactions in its formation and destruction. By the 
action of the sun upon the leaf the carbon and oxygen of car- 
bonic acid are thrust asunder, and the carbon is appropriated by 
the plant or tree, and stored up as fuel in the form of wood and 
coal. The energy necessary to separate the carbon of a pound 
of coal from its oxygen in the carbonic acid of the atmosphere, 
would lift ten million pounds one foot high. In the act of com- 
bustion the carbon reunites with the oxygen, and this immense 
energy in the form of heat is given off to be utilized at will. 
This heat is a repulsive energy, and is the equivalent of that 
repulsive energy from the sun which effected the separation of 
carbon and oxygen in the leaves of the growing plant and 
tree. The work of chemical dissociation at one end absorbs a 
store of power ; recombination at the other end sets it free. 
The amount of heat developed by the oxygenation of the car- 
bon is the same whether that oxygenation take place rapidly by 
■combustion or slowly by natural decay. 

In the case of food the elements are held together in a man- 
ner so feeble as to be equivalent to atomic or molecular dissoci- 
ation. In this form the compound is unstable, and its elements 



96 CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. [C/lOp. IX. 

in a condition to seize on one another in fast chemical union, 
This peculiar state of the food-elements is brought about like 
the condition of actual atomic separation in fuel, by the action 
of the sun; and as the fuel delivers energy on the reunion of 
carbon and oxygen in combustion, so food delivers energy by 
falling from a state of comparative dissociation into close chem- 
ical union in course of the several stages of digestion and vital 
utilization. 

The streams which run our mills and the winds which propel 
our vessels and drive machinery, are both originally due to the 
action of the sun. The molecules of the atmosphere are thrust 
further asunder by the action of heat, and thus made lighter, 
whereupon they rise to higher levels freighted with vapor. The 
motion as well as the direction of atmospheric currents are deter- 
mined by differences of weight in different strata and at differ- 
ent places, and by the earth's rotation and the inequalities of its 
surface. The wind-system is throughout the play of attractive 
and repulsive energies with constant disturbance of equilibrium 
and constant action to restore it; and motion takes place in the 
direction of least resistance. 

The power of running streams must be traced back to the 
action of the sun in expanding the water into vapor, when it rises 
into the upper regions of the air, and is carried far away by 
atmospheric currents to condense at lower temperatures, and 
fall as rain. The work done by the rain is manifold and indis- 
pensable. It brings down nitrogen from the atmosphere and dis- 
solves certain elements of plant-food to be utilized in the pro- 
cess of growth. Part of the rain which falls on the land is again 
evaporated; part of it flows over the surface and finds its way 
directly into streams. Another part of it sinks into the earth, 
and again emerges in the form of springs whose rivulets are the 
source and support of rivers. Thus the water which was first 
raised as vapor, gets back to the sea. By the repulsive energy 
of heat, water is made lighter by conversion into vapor, and then 
by the action of gravity it is pressed into higher regions of the 
atmosphere, where it condenses by attractive energy, then falls 



Sec. SP-] CAREER OF THE ORGANISM. 97 

by gravity, and by gravity along the bed of least resistance the 
streams pursue their way down to the ocean, floating vessels, 
turning mills, and reducing the continental levels by freighting 
sediment from the land to the sea. Without the play of 
antagonistic forces there could be no rain, and without rain the 
earth would be a desert. 



CHAPTER X. 

CONFLICT IN THE BIOLOGICAL FORCES. 

Section 59. — The organism begins, grows, develops, and 
then declines, and at last comes to an end. The one is the 
movement of ascent, the other is that of descent. Throughout, 
the organism is itself in a sense a perpetual contest of opposing 
forces. The one set struggles to build up in an orderly manner, 
the other to pull to pieces. The one is integrating, the other 
disintegrating. From conception and birth till after maturity, 
the organizing forces prevail ; during decline, and at death, and 
after death, the disorganizing forces are in the ascendency. The 
career of the organism may be regarded as a dynamical contest 
between opposing forces, always with the same result in the end, 
the victory of the forces of dissolution. 

The forces which preserve the organism and operate it, when 
regarded as a related group, are called vital ; and yet it does not 
appear clear that they are essentially different from those which 
are concerned in the destruction of the organism. They are 
physical and chemical forces which build up, and they are 
chemical and physical forces which pull down. There can be 
no construction without destruction, no life without death. The 
formation of tissue in the life-processes and the consumption of 
tissue in the same processes go on simultaneously as essential 



98 CONFLICT IN BIOLOGY. {Chap. X. 

conditions of the higher manifestations of life. Even the uncon- 
scious functions of the animal system involve a certain measure of 
the destruction of organized material for the power necessary to 
do the work. Every voluntary movement, every act of locomo- 
tion, every contraction of muscle in work or play, every thought, 
every feeling involves the destruction of living tissue. There is 
no manifestation of any form of organic power without the 
consumption and waste of organic material. 

But whatever we may think of "vital force," this we have to 
acknowledge, that it is manifested in any of its forms only in 
connection with what we know- as matter. We are here dealing 
with phenomenal things, and physical forces belong to matter, 
and chemical forces belong to matter, and in the same sense vital 
forces belong to matter — not to " brute, inanimate matter," but 
to phenomenal matter in the higher forms of its manifestations. 
Gravity and chemical affinity are not more properties of matter 
in general than life is a property of protoplasm in particular. 
Under the proper conditions electricity appears as a function of 
matter; under the proper conditions life appears as a function of 
matter. " Life is now universally regarded as a phenomenon of 
matter, and hence, of course, as having no separate existence." — 
(Prof. G. F. Barker). Science knows nothing of the mediaeval- 
ism that matter is a dead something moved only by an extrane- 
ous and living entity — that is a metaphysico-materialistic sur- 
vival. Our point, then, is that while there is antagonism in the 
physical properties of matter and in the chemical properties of 
matter, there is equal antagonism, now become more compli- 
cated and diversified, in the organic properties of matter. Or, it 
might be better to say that, in the physical, the chemical, and 
the organic behavior of matter, there is equal antagonism, assum- 
ing new and more diversified forms as the succession of phenom- 
ena rises in the scale of manifestation. But even on the 
theory that chemical force is an entity distinct from matter, and 
that vital force is a spiritual entity distinct from matter, still is 
antagonism, as obviously as ever, a fact of phenomenal existence, 
and this is the especial point in which our interest at present 



Sec. 60.] WASTE AND REPAIR. 99 

centres. Ludwig, quoted by Stallo (Modern Physics, 19), said 
thirty years ago that, "Every analysis of the animal organism 
has thus far brought to light a limited number of chemical 
atoms, the presence of the light-(heat-) bearing ether and of the 
electric fluids. These data lead to the inference that all the 
phenomena of animal life are consequences of the simple attrac- 
tions and repulsions resulting from the concurrence of these 
elementary substances." 

Section 60. — What is the essential character of organic con- 
sumption and waste? It is a chemical change by the loss of 
force in consequence of which organized material loses its vital 
quality and becomes useless to the organic system. The com- 
plex substances which form the tissues and nourish them are 
held together by feeble chemical affinity, and readily fall into 
simpler and more stable combinations, and in doing so, they lib- 
erate force for the uses of the organism. In the contraction of 
a muscle, a part of the tissue undergoes this change and from 
living becomes inanimate, when the force thus liberated goes to 
the production of the mechanical result which the contraction 
of the muscle involves. We cannot think without the act 
involving a like change in brain substance, which in thus falling 
from a higher to a lower chemical state surrenders its living force 
and becomes waste matter subject to removal from the system. 
This waste which is constantly going on through all parts of the 
organism, must be repaired if the organism holds its own. It 
is the office of alimentation to do this. We have then the 
antithesis that while all the activities of the organism consume 
its tissues, and thus produce constant waste, the operation of the 
digestive functions furnishes material in fitting form and place 
for the repair of this waste. The once living material which 
becomes inert within the system is removed, and other material 
becomes organic to take its place. 

We are aware that this statement traverses disputed ground. 
That view has been adopted which appears to have the greater 
support of evidence and the principal weight of authority. But 
for the end here in view it does not matter whether the working 



IOO CONFLICT IN BIOLOGY. \Chap. X. 

energy of the system is derived from the breaking down of tissue 
in the animal, or from the direct breaking down of the unstable 
compounds which constitute food. In both instances it would 
be the falling from higher to lower organization, and the delivery 
in work of the energy thus set free. 

Section 6i. — The blood is the great carrier of the system. 
It takes away effete, used-up material, and delivers that which is 
to take its place. The waste is carried to the lungs, skin, kid- 
neys, and thrown from the system, while the new material is 
delivered everywhere throughout the organism. 

Concerned in these counter and compensating operations are 
two pumps, the blood-pump and the air-pump. The heart is a 
force-pump which sends the blood to every part of the system. 
This marvelous muscle is constantly exerted to overcome resist- 
ance, at more than seventy beats per minute during the entire 
period of life. It keeps in constant circulation about one-tenth 
the entire weight of the body. The circulation of the blood is 
but movement in opposite directions. The blood is constantly 
propelled from the heart, and as constantly returns to it. In its 
simple form in vegetable cells, the circulation consists of move- 
ment toward the nucleus with corresponding movement from it. 
In the lowest animal forms it may be only movement back and 
forth. And however large a part capillary attraction may 
play in the phenomena of circulation, we are still in the pres- 
ence of mechanical action and resistance, in which a fluid with- 
out chemical affinity for the tissue through which it passes, is 
propelled along the capillaries by another fluid which has such 
affinity.— (Draper's Memoirs, XXVI. and XXVII. and Phys.) 

By the lung pump, inspiration and expiration take place, 
being a movement in counter directions of the gaseous elements 
concerned in breathing. Oxygen is taken into the lungs, and 
oxygen, carbonic acid, and vapor exhaled from them. The 
blood receives oxygen through the lungs, and delivers in return 
carbonic acid, vapor, a waste material from the tissues of the 
system. 



SeC. 64.] PLANT-LIFE A BATTLE. IOI 

Section 62. — The contraction and expansion of muscles in 
every part of the animal structure are opposite forms of action, 
and in the contraction of muscles one action is opposed to 
another; and this counter strain is necessary to their co-opera- 
tion in the production of results. The simple act of standing 
erect is accomplished only by the mutually opposing action of 
muscles. And when it comes to walking, leaping, running, 
dancing, all the manifold movements of the body, this balancing 
of muscular action assumes an almost infinite diversity. 

Section 63. — The bulk of animals is determined by opposing 
factors. The weight of the body must be supported, and it 
may be greater in the water than in the air. The animal that 
walks may have more weight than the one that flies. The 
living creature whose tissues are frail must be small, although it 
crawls. The animal which has to protect itself by fleeing must 
be of lighter build than one which has some other means of 
defense. There will be an intimate relation between its means 
of procuring food on the one hand, and its size, build, strength, 
agility, arms or the want of arms, on the other. Adaptation 
presupposes defect and implies limitation. When there is gain 
on one side, there is apt to be loss on the other. Great strength 
and great fleetness, for example, are incompatible, and the race- 
horse and draft-horse, the greyhound and the bulldog illustrate 
the excluded element of the antithesis. 

Section 64. — The life of the plant is throughout a battle. 
The seed must get into the soil with sufficient moisture, and not 
too much. If too cold or too hot it would perish. When the 
germ has formed, it must push its way through the particles of 
earth, thus doing its first work in overcoming resistance. When 
above the surface a frost may nip it, or an animal, a bird may 
pluck it up, or an insect destroy it. Other plants may rob it of 
nourishment and shut out the light of the sun. It must make 
headway against the attraction of gravity; and if it prospers to 
become high enough to catch the wind, the storm may break it 
off. A drought may wilt it any time, or a flood may drown it. 
6 



102 CONFLICT IN BIOLOGY. \Chap. X. 

And when it has reached the stage of bloom, it may fail of fer- 
tilization in a rain storm, or meet with untimely frost, and die 
at last without having accomplished the most important function 
of its existence, that of reproduction. Its part in the battle of 
life is not a strikingly active one, and little aggressive, but it is 
exposed throughout to attack, and only by the temper of steady 
resistance can it go through life successfully. Of all the innu- 
merable seeds which germinate, only a small percentage reach 
maturity. Only the few win, the many suffer defeat. 

The following is from an authority who had no theory of con- 
flict to subserve: "The phenomena of crystallization lead, of 
necessity, to this conception of molecular polarity. Under the 
operation of such forces the molecules of a seed take up posi- 
tion from which they would never move if undisturbed by an 
external impulse. But solar light and heat, which come to us 
as waves through space, are the great agents of molecular 
disturbance. On the inert molecules of seed and soil these 
waves impinge, disturbing the atomic equilibrium, which there 
is an immediate effort to restore. The effort, incessantly 
defeated — for the waves continue to pour in — is incessantly 
renewed ; in the molecular struggle matter is gathered from the 
soil and from the atmosphere, and built, in obedience to the 
forces which guide the molecules, into the special form of the 
tree. In a general way, therefore, the life of the tree might be 
defined as an unceasing effort to restore a disturbed equili- 
brium." — (Tyndall in Nineteenth Century). This is the dynam- 
ical view of tree-life in which the result springs from the con- 
flict of forces. A similar view, but applied to organization in 
general, is given by Lester F. Ward (Popular Science Monthly, 
October, 1877): "Organization is the necessary consequence 
of the competition of the integrating and disintegrating forces, 
so long as the former prevail. The influence of the sun upon 
the matter of the globe is toward its disintegration and dissipa- 
tion into gas. But for the opposing influence of gravitation, 
attraction, or concentration, this result would be speedly accom- 
plished. But the resultant of these two antagonistic forces, at 



Sec. 65.] THE WAR OF PLANTS. 103 

a time when their relative power is substantially what it now is 
on the surface of our globe, is such as to render possible the 
form of evolution which we denominate organic life." And 
further: "We are thus brought into full view of the deepest 
truth that underlies the redistribution of matter — the profound 
antithesis between gravitation and ethereal vibration, which 
constitute in the last analysis, the true correlative principles of 
which evolution and dissolution are corresponding processes. 
These are the agencies which are at all times antagonizing each 
other in all parts of the universe, but whose exact equality in it 
seems to form a logical tenet of the modern cosmology. A cer- 
tain golden mean between these forces, but in which the former 
must predominate, results in organization ; star systems are 
formed in space, and life is developed out of the planetary ele- 
ments." If life be thus educed from the play of antagonism, 
it is but the completion of the antithesis that antagonism should 
reappear in the play of life itself. 

Section 65. — The battle of the plant is waged on its indi- 
vidual account, but in connection with its like, the success of 
every plant goes to the behoof of its species. There is a con- 
test between species throughout the vegetable world, and there 
has been for the millions of years during which plant life has 
existed on the earth. This is as truly a territorial war as any 
which has been waged by national armies. There is a univer- 
sal effort to advance as far over the earth's surface as the charac- 
ter of the soil and climate permit; and in this effort to advance, 
species meet on the same ground, and contend in Greek and 
Roman style for the mastery. "All the plants of a country are 
at war, one with the other." — (De Condone). The territorial 
limits of species have been largely determined by this struggle. 
"We must regard the bounds of each species' sphere of exist- 
ence, as determined by the balancing of two antagonistic sets of 
forces" — (H. Spencer). The geographical distribution of species, 
and the character in general of the flora of any locality are in a 
great measure the result of the contest of plant with plant and 
of species with species. In speaking of the forests on our 



104 CONFLICT IN BIOLOGY. [Chap. X. 

Indian mounds, Darwin exclaims: "What a struggle between 
the several kinds of trees must here have gone on during long 
centuries, each annually scattering its seeds by the thousand; 
that war between insect and insect — between insects, snails, and 
other animals with birds and beasts of prey — all striving to in- 
crease, and all feeding on each other or on the trees or their 
seeds and seedlings, or on the plants which first clothed the 
ground and thus checked the growth of the trees! Throw up a 
handful of feathers, and all must fall to the ground according 
to definite laws; but how simple is this problem compared to the 
action and reaction of the innumerable plants and animals 
which have determined, in the course of centuries, the propor- 
tional numbers and kinds of trees now growing on the old 
Indian ruins !" — (Origin of Species). 

It is well known that as civilization advances certain plants 
disappear and others come in to take their place. This is the 
result of conflict between species under changed conditions of 
plant life which the clearing away of the forest and the cultiva- 
tion of the soil bring about. While man has played his part in 
this contest of vegetable species with one another, hindering 
one and favoring another, animals have contributed their share 
toward determining the issues of the conflict. Animals like 
men have their preferences in the vegetable world, but unlike 
men who cultivate and extend their favorites, animals feed on 
theirs, and contribute to their extinction rather than to their ex- 
tension. But, for this very reason, the grazing of herbivorous 
animals has no doubt had much to do with determining the 
character and limits of vegetable distribution. An annual, if 
largely fed upon, may perish from a locality entirely; the chances 
of a survival would, therefore, be with a perennial. If this peren- 
nial grew up quickly, and ripened its seed early, its chances of 
survival would be still greater. If, in addition it spread rapidly 
by means of underground runners, its chances would be stilL 
further enhanced. The grasses fill these conditions best, and 
some of them better than others. Even under the system of 
agriculture which has been devised by the intelligence of man, 



Sec. 66.] THE WAR OF ANIMALS. 105 

these qualities favor the vigor with which certain grasses retain 
their hold on J;he soil, and find their way into new localities to 
the displacement of previous occupants. 

No small influence in determining the geographical limits of 
species is the action of birds in scattering far and wide the seeds 
of the fruits on which they feed. They extend the outposts and 
assist the territorial conquests of their favorites. 

The elevation of mountain ranges, and the elevation and sub- 
sidence of continental tracts have hindered and helped species 
by turns, and played no small part in making the floral map of 
the world. The change of climate thus effected by the change 
of level, and the isolation of districts by mountain barriers and 
submerged tracts could not but influence the ultimate results of 
the struggle between species. Add to this the great changes of 
climate which the earth must have undergone between such 
periods as that in which a semi-tropical flora prevailed within 
the arctic circle, and that in which ice a mile deep covered the 
north temperate zone down to the fortieth parallel, and we per- 
ceive what powerful agencies have assisted in determining the 
jurisdiction of the several floras among which the surface of the 
earth has been partitioned. 

Section 66. — Substantially what has been said of plants may 
be said of animals, with this difference, however, that the latter 
are more aggressive, attacking and feeding on one another as 
well as on members of the vegetable kingdom. The war among 
insects, fishes, birds, and quadrupeds is war indeed. Nor is 
this preying upon one another an incidental thing; it belongs to 
the system, and is part of the universal war in nature. So true 
is this, that even the paleontology of a period is incomplete till 
the remains of the carnivorous enemies of known herbivora 
have been discovered. Some species are fitted by structure and 
habit to prey on others, and without success in securing prey, 
they could not exist. Indeed, they never could have come into 
existence but by the development of tooth and claw, and instincts 
which enable them to sustain life by inflicting death. The cru- 
elty of killing is in the "plan" of nature, but the suffering thus 



106 CONFLICT IN BIOLOGY. [Chap. X. 

caused is no greater than that of dying a natural death, which is 
equally in this plan. Death inflicted by carnivorous animals 
may average even less pain to the individual than death which 
comes about in other ways; and if we admit that puerility in 
philosophy, anthropomorphic omnipotence, we must concede 
that the difficulties of its responsibility for the occurrence of 
death by killing are no greater than for the occurrence of death 
by starvation, disease, or old age. The pain of destruction and 
death appear to be necessary conditions of sentient enjoyment. 
If beings live they must die; and if certain portions of the 
living kingdoms did not prey upon other portions, the aggregate 
of sentient existence with what enjoyment there may be in it, 
would be much less than it is. These are simple facts of what 
we hold to be the only possible form of universe. 

Everything is prey; " every organized body, whether confervse 
or moss, insect or mammal, becomes the prey of some animal ; 
every organic substance, sap or blood, horn or feather, flesh or 
bone, disappears under the teeth of some of these." — (Animal 
Parasites, Van Benedjn). The poet was not pessimistic but 
only matter-of-fact when he sung: 

"For nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal, 
The may-fly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow is speared by the shrike, 
And the whole little wood, where I sit, is a world of plunder and prey." 

— Tennyson. 

Amid the beauties of an oriental scene Siddartha (Gautama) 

saw deeper : 

"He saw 
The thorns which grew upon the rose of life: 
How the swart peasant sweated for his wage, 
Toiling for leave to live; and how he urged 
The great-eyed oxen through the flaming hours, 
Goading their velvet flanks: then marked he, too, 
How lizard fed on ant, and snake on him, 
And kite on both; and how the fish-hawk robbed 
The fish -tiger of that which it had seized; 
The shrike chasing the bulbul, which did chase 
The jeweled butterflies; till everywhere 
Each slew a slayer and in turn was slain, 
Life living upon death. So the fair show 



Sec, 6y.] PARASITIC LIFE. 107 

Veiled our vast, savage, grim conspiracy 
Of mutual murder, from the worm to man, 
Who himself kills his fellow; seeing which — 
The hungry ploughman and his laboring kine, 
Their dewlaps blistered with the bitter yoke, 
The rage to live which makes all living strife — 
The Prince Siddartha sighed. 'Is this,' he said, 
" That happy earth they brought me forth to see ? '" 

— Edwin Arnold. 

Section 67. — Even deeper than the poets saw lie the phe- 
nomena of parasitic life. The microscope may penetrate farther 
than the vision of an oriental prince come to save the world. 
Microscopic creatures mercilessly prey on animals within and 
without, and while they consciously enjoy nothing themselves, 
their lives being purely reflex, they inflict pain on sentient crea- 
tures, thus lessening the aggregate of enjoyment. There are 
but few animals, if any, which have not their peculiar parasites, 
and there are " parasites on parasites." There is but one law 
governing the action of the parasite, and that is its own interest 
without the least benevolent regard for the friend on whom it 
preys. The mother ichneumon, by means of a thread-like ovi- 
positor, inserts its eggs into the caterpillar, the sequel of which 
is that "the young ichneumon devours its nurse piecemeal, organ 
after organ; and for fear that death should supervene too quickly, 
the mother takes care to chloroform the victim beforehand to 
make it last longer." " Remarkable examples of the refinement 
of cruelty are to be found in this little animal world. It is not 
enough that some among them feed on the entrails of their 
young neighbors; there are wasps which, in order to make the 
agony last longer, place by the side of the eggs which they lay, 
chloroformed flies, which wait patiently for the time when they 
can yield themselves up, still palpitating, to these young tyrants." 
We will waste no sympathy on spiders which scruple not to in- 
flict pain on their captives; but something like retribution may 
overtake them when the sphex seizes them, chloroforms them, 
and stows them away to be fed upon while still alive by the 
larvae of this insect. 

But if we have doubts as to whether insects, fishes, birds, or 



108 CONFLICT IN BIOLOGY. [Ckap. X. 

beasts suffer when preyed upon by parasitic enemies, there is no 
longer room for doubt when we come to the higher animals and 
to man; and these are not exempt. "There is no organ which is 
sheltered from the invasion of parasites; neither the brain, the 
ear, the eye, the heart, the blood, the lungs, the spinal marrow, 
the nerves, the muscles, or even the bones. Cysticerci have been 
found in the interior of the lobes of the brain, in the eyeball, in 
the heart, and in the substance of the bones, as well as in the 
spinal marrow. . . One kind of worm inhabits the 
digestive passages, some at the entrance, others at the place of 
exit; another occupies the fossae of the nose; a third the liver or 
the kidneys." Trichinae are found in the flesh of most mam- 
mals. "Leuckart counted seven hundred thousand trichinae in a 
pound of the flesh of a man, and Zeuker speaks of even five 
millions found in a similar quantity of human flesh." — (Quota- 
tions of this section from Benedin's Animal Parasites.) 

But after all that has been definitely ascertained concerning 
animal parasites which infest human beings, the half has proba- 
bly not, been told. There are vegetable as well as animal para- 
sites, and some of them no doubt as deadly. A large portion 
of human diseases are believed with a good deal of reason to 
be caused by microscopic organisms which poison the currents of 
life. It is a cruel reflection, but one cannot help thinking, how 
many and what kinds of parasites will infest the "coming man." 

The relation of parasites to their principals, and of the eaters 
in general to the eaten, may be regarded as examples of unhappy 
adaptation ; but these should no more be taken as evidence of 
pessimism than examples of happy adaptation should be taken 
as evidence of optimism. If there be life at all on general prin- 
ciples — if the laws of life are not to be interfered with in an 
exceptional manner in the interest of well-being, this parasitic 
scourge must have place as the result of general causation 
in the legitimate operations of the system as a whole. The 
devouring process, even in its cannibal state, begins low down 
in the scale of animate existence. An enterprising amoeba will 
envelop another and digest it without scruple. The blood cor- 



Sec. 68.~\ PLANT AND ANIMAL LIFE. 109 

puscles in higher animals simulate this feat, and the larger ones 
swallow up the smaller. Cannibalism in nature has a long and 
diversified range of activity. 

Section 68. — It is not in outright war between plants and ani- 
mals that we are to look exclusively for reciprocal action between 
them and a mutual influence on each other's modes of being. 
The chlorophyl of plants absorbs carbonic acid, and having 
appropriated the carbon, exhales oxygen, while animals substan- 
tially inhale oxygen and exhale carbonic acid. Plants receive 
carbon through the green protoplasm of their leaves; animals 
throw it off through their lungs. In animals carbon is a waste 
product; in plants it is that which builds up. Plants purify the 
air for animal breathing, and animals enrich the air for plant 
nutrition. And again, plants under the influence of the sun 
elaborate organic material which is the ultimate support of all 
animal life; and the food having performed its function in the 
animal economy, returns disorganized to the earth and air, when 
plants again seize it, and subject it to renewed organization. 
The sun acts through plant life for the accumulation of force by 
atomic separation, changing inorganic into organic material — this 
is the lifting of the weight; and when these plant products are 
consumed by animals, they yield up their store of force to the 
production of results in the animal sphere, and in doing so the 
recombination of atoms into the inorganic form takes place — and 
this is the falling of the weight. The two operations are directly 
the opposite of each other, and yet only different phases of the 
same action, and necessary to the succession of phenomena. 
Accumulation and expenditure, the winding up and the running 
down, in the little as well as in the great, the one making the 
other not only possible but necessary in the economy of nature, 
are the two opposite and inseparable sides of the same thing. 
The unity of the whole is maintained by the antagonism of the 
parts. "Every action in nature is truly two opposite and equal 
changes, and, to be adequately apprehended requires to be seen 
in both its aspects." — (Westminster Review, July, 1865). 

Notwithstanding this opposition of results which compensate 



HO CONFLICT IN BIOLOGY. \Chap. X. 

each other, there is no contradiction in the physiological func- 
tions of plants and animals, life in the one being but a higher 
development of life in the other. "The life of the animal and 
the life of the plant are, like their protoplasm, and in all essential 
points, identical." — (President Allman's Address, British Associa- 
tion). 

Section 69. — The universal struggle in the animate world is 
a condition of development and improvement in the character 
of living things. The weak and ill-adapted are weeded out; the 
stronger and better adapted survive. And this better adaptation 
implies, new structures and functions, and greater complexity of 
organization. Superiority of race has, therefore, grown out of 
the struggle of existence; it is the result of conflict whether with 
changing climate and soil, or with competing and aggressive races. 
And since conflict is the capital factor of the process of evolu- 
tion, it follows that man owes his superiority of structure, his 
existence as man, to conflict in the physical and organic worlds. 

Section 70. — In the evolution and maintenance of organic 
forms there are two conflicting tendencies constantly in opera- 
tion; the one is the persistence of type, the other the rise of 
variations which may be either improvement or deterioration. 
It is the conflict of heredity with an opposing factor, but the 
opposing factor would have no power to effect change of types 
but for the co-operation of heredity. The two counter forces 
unite to diversify and perpetuate species. Without persistence 
of type there would be no species, and without divergence there 
would be no diversity of type, and the organic world would be 
an impossibility. 

Section 71. — Physiology is coming to be looked upon as the 
play of opposite and compensating forces. The general features 
of biological antagonism have been distinctly brought out by 
Herbert Spencer, who had no theory of antagonism to bias his 
statement. According to him, the organism is a dynamical 
result of the constant balancing of opposing forces. An instruct- 
ive form of this antagonism obtains between the expenditure 



Sec. //.] ANTAGONISM IN VITAL FUNCTIONS. Ill 

for growth, development, and exertion of the individual on the 
one hand, and the expenditure for offspring on the other. Dr. 
Carpenter has formulated the theory that, "there is a certain 
degree of antagonism between the nutritive and reproductive 
functions, the one being executed at the expense of the other." — ■ 
(Popular Science Monthly, August, 1879). A fine statement on 
this subject is to be found in Part Sixth of Spencer's Biology. 
This particular form of antagonism is part of a general antago- 
nism which prevails among the functions of the organism; and 
we call especial attention to it, because it is typical of forms of 
antagonism which greatly prevail in the upper strata of existence, 
and with which man has much to do. 

The functions of the organism are maintained in healthy 
activity and in symmetry of relations with one another, only by 
due expenditure from a common fund of energy. If more is 
expended for any function, there is less for the others. This 
form of antagonism obtains between growth and reproduction. 
The two cannot go on in full vigor at the same time. While 
growth is active, its draft upon the resources of the organism 
leaves none for reproduction ; and hence, reproduction begins 
only when growth is nearly or fully completed. It is a part of 
the same fact that minute organisms usually multiply more 
rapidly than larger ones. Complexity of organism is in like 
manner opposed to fecundity. The simple organisms multiply 
more rapidly than the more complex. Again, if expenditure for 
the necessary activities of the individual life be great, there is 
less of the common fund for reproduction. Here are three 
sources of expenditure for the maintenance of the individual: 
That of growth, that which is concerned in building up com- 
plexity of organization, and that which administers to the wants 
of the individual. There are also three kinds of expenditure 
concerned in reproduction: That of maturing the egg or fetus, 
that of providing nourishment for the offspring after birth, and 
that which is required for the care of the young. While the first 
three forms of expenditure administer solely to the individual, 
the second three establish the offspring; both are drawn from the 



112 CONFLICT IN BIOLOGY. [Chap. X. 

resources of the individual, and what is used for the individual 
cannot be applied to the offspring, and what the offspring gets is 
at the parents' expense. Such is the antagonistic relation. It 
may be expressed in plain Saxon that, in this nutritive competi- 
tion, what the one gets the other must do without. It may 
illustrate this, perhaps, to say that this simple fact is overlooked 
by the sticklers for woman's intellectual equality with man. 
They forget that, if she could maintain her own organic resources, 
and establish her offspring in theirs, and still be man's equal in 
intellectual resources, she would be a monster of power. Nature 
works in no such way. There is nothing accomplished in the 
organic world, or any other, without the expenditure of force ; 
and if this force is expended in one way, it cannot be expended 
in another. It is a part of this general antagonism that, beyond 
a certain point, physical activity and mental activity are antago- 
nistic; that, if the one is in excess, the other must be limited. 

It may be remarked that the form of antagonism here brought 
into view is relative rather than direct. It is the antagonism of 
limitations, of gain involving loss, of progress necessitating 
retrogression, — that form of antagonism mainly to which it is the 
object of these chapters to call attention. 



CHAPTER XI. 

ANTAGONISM IN THE SPHERE OF MIND. 

Section 72. — The mental sphere supervenes upon the bio- 
logical, as the biological supervenes upon the physical and 
chemical ; and in a certain sense and to a certain extent, the 
higher includes the lower. Mind is indeed very closely related 
to life ; it appears far down in the biological scale, in germinal 



Sec. ?2.~] MAN THE HEIR OF CONFLICT. 113 

form at least, by the double act of the individual which perceives 
outer conditions and adapts itself thereto. Properly to sense 
the conditions of life and to adapt life to them — this is the pre- 
vailing function of mind in all the grades of its existence. As force 
appears only in connection with matter, as life appears only in con- 
nection with organization, so mind appears only in connection 
with life. "Among advanced thinkers it is now unhesitatingly 
admitted that mind is a form or function of life." — (Lewes.) We 
know nothing of mind as an independent entity ; we know it 
only as bound up with physical organization. No independent 
entity heralds the body; and when the body becomes non-living, 
the mind escapes from the field of cognizance. It is manifested 
only in connection with a nervous system ; and when that system 
is disturbed, the mind is disturbed ; and when that system per- 
ishes, the mind which was manifested in connection therewith 
stops all its manifestations to us ; and we may believe it to be 
still an existing entity, but we only know it as a thing that was. 
We have no quarrel with faith, but we have here to do only 
with science — with that which comes within the range of the 
knowable. Dr. Courtenay, Bishop of Kingston, and the great 
Dr. Priestly believed that the mind must perish with the body, 
and could only be restored to life by a miracle; but they had 
faith that this miracle would be wrought. 

It is often repeated that "man is an epitome of the universe." 
This is true if the doctrine of evolution be true, — man does 
comprehend the essential elements of all below him, with, of 
course, something else beside. We have found antagonism in the 
physical and chemical spheres and in the anatomical and physi- 
ological spheres. All these enter into the composition of man, 
and they bring their antagonism with them. If we look through 
the long lines of ascending forms in the living world, we find 
various forms of antagonistic phenomena, as the last chapter 
attempts to explain ; and if man is the ultimate result of these 
lines of evolution, we should expect to find conflict in the grain 
of his constitution, and provided for in the moral and physical 
elements of his being. But on any view man cannot be sepa- 



114 ANTAGONISM IN MIND. \Chdp. XL 

rated from the nature with which he is so intimately bound up in 
his life on earth. " Man and nature are two great effects, which 
coming from the same source, bear the same characteristics." — 
(Cousin.) If there be conflict in the physical world, there will 
be conflict in the mental world. 

If it be, however, that man is an advance beyond all else that 
is animate on earth, he must embody some things nowhere else 
to be found. The tautology may be allowed us to say that he 
is qualitatively more than all beneath him. It may be true, or 
very nearly true, as Haeckel observes, " that between the most 
highly developed animal souls and the lowest developed human 
souls, there exists only a small quantitative, but no qualitative 
difference;" but it is manifestly different when we come to com- 
pare the highest human with the highest animal souls. For, 
since development consists in the differentiation of a simple 
function or faculty into a complex one by giving rise to new 
branches for the division of labor, a process which involves 
qualitative additions to what had existed before, then does 
human psychology contain something which is not to be found 
in the psychology of beasts. Man is the creature of mind 
beyond all others. But if antagonism obtain in the lower psy- 
chology, it is almost certain to obtain in the higher with the 
difference which refinement gives. More of this, however, in 
other connections. 

Section 73. — The animal ancestry of man were actually 
forged into physical and mental form by conflict. Anthropoid 
forms were the composite result of these battle forces; and when 
the form which must be regarded as man was reached, he was a 
being framed by antagonism and fitted for war. No doubt the 
very first of beings worthy the name of man, were born to the 
heritage of battle. Climatic changes, inclemencies of the 
weather — excessive cold, excessive heat, storm and flood — are 
all aggressive forces which man must needs nerve himself to 
resist. The means of subsistence could be obtained only by a 
struggle. His right to esculent roots, nuts, berries, was con- 
tested by animals a little lower in the scale than himself. The 



SeC. 73. ] CONFLICT THE MOTHER OF INVENTION. 115 

fishes, birds, and beasts on which he desired to feed, were 
coveted by other fishes, birds, and beasts which were better 
armed by nature than he to secure their prey. The contest was 
not merely with game for the possession of it, but with other 
creatures to prevent them from possessing it. Man was neces- 
sarily an aggressive being, pushing his own interests by making 
war on everything that stood in his way. 

And what more natural in the course of this universal self-seek- 
ing than that man should come in collision with man, and groups 
of men with other groups? The right to a slain stag not being 
clear, the rival claimants would be almost sure to decide it by a 
trial of strength; or, if only one would fight, he would get the prize, 
and the other would go hungry, and perhaps starve. Meeting on 
the same grounds to contest for the same food, they would natu- 
rally regard each other as enemies to be driven off as the most 
obvious condition of self-preservation. An inoffensive, non-resist- 
ant race of human beings, if such could have come into exist- 
ence, would very soon have been overwhelmed and extinguished 
by their more aggressive, violent, and self-seeking neighbors. 
Their bodies would have been taken for food, and their country 
used for a hunting-ground. If such a race should, by isolation, 
remain undisturbed till in later times when their conquerors had 
adopted agriculture, the innocent race would be reduced to 
slavery, from which they could only rise by the development of 
pugnacity — a condition not likely to come about. 

But in what way must the earliest human race have distin- 
guished itself from the anthropoid race from which it sprung? 
By greater efficiency in conflict — by that higher exercise of the 
reasoning faculties which led to the use of weapons of defense 
and of offense. To pick up a club from the ground, or break it 
from a limb, and wield it in self-defense, would be a masterly 
stroke of genius in whatever creature did it for the first time. 
To pick up a stone and hurl it at an aggressive beast would be 
a similar triumph of the inventive faculty. The genius who had 
shown the way would soon have imitators, and having tried these 
weapons for defense, they would soon use them for attack under 



Il6 ANTAGONISM IN MIND. [Chap. XL 

the pressure of hunger, and having used them on animals, they 
would very readily turn them against one another. As less 
primitive than the club, a desirable form of weapon would be a 
stick pointed at one end. Another stroke of inventive genius 
would be the insertion of a pointed sliver of flint into the end 
of a shaft, thus forming a rude spear. A sharp-edged sliver of 
flint would be turned to cutting purposes — perhaps the first tool 
used by mechanical man. From the use of accidental pieces of 
hard stone a great advance would be made by springing pieces 
of the desired form from the solid block. They could now 
make their own spear-points, and cutting and scraping stones. 
Strings might now be cut from the tendons and hides of animals. 
The string and the spear would be two elements of the bow-gun. 
Reduce the size of the spear for an arrow, and tie a string to 
the two ends of an elastic stick, and a new weapon would be 
invented, which appears to be very simple to us, but which was 
a great triumph of original suggestion when it was first done. 
Devices for attaching handles to axe-like and hammer-like 
stones, and slings for hurling round stones to great distances 
would be promising results of the improving intellect of primitive 
man. Weapons of stone would come at length to be polished 
by patient rubbing, and bone would be introduced for weapons, 
implements, and ornaments. Art would emerge into existence 
in connection with the leading ideas of hunting and war. The 
primitive artist would scratch a picture of the deer he hunted on 
the horns of the same animal. 

From a red-hot stream of lava, the naked savage would readily 
acquire some experience of intense heat. From the effects of fire 
on the dry tree when struck by lightning and burned up, he would 
see on what the monster fed, and in order to keep it alive, the 
happy thought might occur to him to add such fuel as lay 
around in convenient form, thus performing an interesting and 
useful philosophical experiment. But this would not be suffi- 
cient; the fire would go out, and then it must be kindled anew. 
The means of doing this at will would be a great discovery, and 
from the nature of the case, it must have been the result of acci- 



Sec. 74.] CONFLICT DEVELOPING SYMPATHY. 117 

dent. Resorting to friction for some other purpose — perhaps 
the sharpening of a stick — it was happily discovered that it de- 
veloped heat, and by persistence the presence of fire was evoked. 
They had now the means of roasting their prisoners and their 
game if they wished. 

No doubt that all along the line of human development, 
necessity, aided by accident, has been the mother of invention, 
every new device having for its object some form of relief in diffi- 
cult situations. Discovery and invention gave power, and power 
gave victory. 

The elephant has been known to break a stick for the purpose 
of scratching off a leech, and to make a fly-brush out of a bush, 
and use it. Thus, the only tool-making and tool-using animal 
known, summons this resource of intelligence for protection 
against his enemies. Early man no doubt did the same. It is 
no exaggeration to say that man's first inventions, his first sallies 
of intellectual originality, were used to make himself stronger in 
the battle of life. Not only has the conflict, which man must 
needs carry on against all that oppose his wants, cultivated his 
pugnacity and made him a creature of conflict, but it has actu- 
ally contributed more than all things else to make him distinct- 
ively an intellectual being. The most intelligent and courage- 
ous survived; the stupid, indolent, and cowardly succumbed. 
Mankind made progress, and progress came through conflict. 
What wonder that the history of the human past is almost 
wholly the history of war ! What wonder if conflict is organized 
into the very tissue of the highest races on earth, and that they 
still fight with one another in manifold ways, while boasting of 
their civilization. 

Section 74 — All the manifold forms of human warfare have 
had two distinctive results in a sense the opposite of each other, 
yet co-operating to give strength for the conflict: while they cul- 
tivated the sentiment of hostility, they developed along with it 
the fellow feeling of mutual interest in a common cause, and 
made man a creature of sympathy, as well as of enmity. Two 
united were stronger than either alone, and nothing perhaps in 



91 / 



Il8 ANTAGOISM IN MIND. \CJlClp. XL 

human experience has done more than the need of strength for 
every form of attack and defence, to induce men to unite their 
efforts, and cultivate by the absolute necessities of the case, the 
sympathies which pertain to fraternal co-operation. The com- 
mon sympathy of the clan, the tribe, the larger aggregations of 
men, has largely grown out of the exigencies of combat for 
mutual protection; and the patriotism of modern times owes 
much to the same cause. This will be treated a little more fully 
hereafter. — (Sections 97-99). 

Section 75. — While the organism may be defined a unit of 
resistance, or of response, to forces which act upon it from with- 
out: in all but the very lowest forms it adjusts this response by 
means of a nervous system, which forms the great connecting 
link between biological and psychological phenomena. G. H. 
Lewes observes that, "the genesis of subjective phenomena is 
determined by the action of the cosmos on our sensibility 
and the reaction of our sensibility. 

The mental forms or laws of thought which determine 
the character of particular experiences, were themselves 
evolved through a continued action and reaction of the 
cosmos and the soul, precisely as the laws of organic action 
which determine the character of particular functions were 
evolved through a continued adaptation of the organism to the 
medium." — (Physical Basis of Mind, 318). While thus the organ- 
ism is in a sense the antagonist of the inorganic and other forces 
without, it embraces within itself opposing forms of action 
which belong to the sphere of mind as well as to that of life. 
After a profound review of both fields of inquiry, Herbert 
Spencer affirms that, "As there are two antagonist processes 
by which consciousness is maintained, so there are two antagonist 
processes by which bodily life is maintained." — (Psychology II., 
301, 302). 

In simple reflex action an external stimulus is conveyed along 
the afferent nerve to the ganglion, and thence transmitted along 
the efferent nerve to the muscles, which thereupon contract. 
This contraction is a response to the initiative stimulus of an 



SeC. 75-] MENTAL AND NERVOUS SERIES. 119 

outside cause; and the method of it is by two currents of ner- 
vous energy running in opposite directions, the first from the 
point of excitement at the surface to some point within the 
organism, and the second thence back to the surface for the 
production of the muscular result as a self-protective or self- 
promotive adjustment to the outside stimulant. Such is the 
general character of reflex action, and it tells nothing against it 
that the vegetative functions of the organism are under nervous 
control, for this is truly reflex, as may be readily shown. Reflex 
action may exist independent of conscious mind, as in very low 
forms under all circumstances, and in the vegetative system of 
higher forms, and in profound sleep, when the muscles respond 
to external stimulus without consciousness as usually understood, 
or any form of cerebral activity. It is true, G. H. Lewes has 
labored to show that consciousness and sentience are co-exten- 
sive and even identical, but this view can only be maintained 
by wresting from consciousness its usual signification, and 
applying the term outside the limit which this permits. But 
aside from the niceties involved in the question of conscious- 
ness, there is an increasing school of psychologists who regard 
reflex action as the type of all mental action, and even as the 
germ which passes by development into unmistakable mind. 

As the recognition of external influences and response to 
them assume higher and more complicated forms, the nervous 
mechanism by which these higher results are produced, becomes 
more complicated in structure. Between the nervous system of 
man, and that of the lowest animal forms with traces of nervous 
structure, there are many degrees of difference, but these are 
supplied one after another from the lowest to the highest by the 
intermediate series of living things. The line of mentality, 
from the lowest to the highest, forms one series ; the line of 
nervous mechanism, from the lowest to the highest,forms another 
series; and the two series, though by no means minutely grad- 
uated, are parallel, having a general correspondence with each 
other, and would be, if Leibnitz' philosophy were true, a clear 
enough case of "pre-established harmony." In the mental 



120 ANTAGONISM IN MIND. [C/iaJ>. XL 

series we have (i) reflex action ; a little further on is (2) instinct- 
ive action ; and still higher, and reaching to the highest, (3) 
rational action. The adjustment of behavior to a new situation 
of simple character may be a lower form of rational action, as 
a higher form of it would be the adjustment of behavior to a 
new situation which involves the balancing of a number of 
complex considerations. In the nervous series, there are, first, 
the afferent and efferent nerves united at the inner extremity by 
a swelling of nervous substance for simple reflex action ; then, 
there are many such swellings having nervous connections with 
one another, and communicating further on with still larger 
aggregations of nervous matter, all of which in some sort serve 
for the registry of impressions, or the record of experience how- 
ever simple, and afford the basis of intuitive phenomena. The 
cerebrum belongs to higher creatures in the scale, and is the 
organ of reason and the will, there being a general correspond- 
ence between the degree of mental power and the texture, size, 
and complexity of the brain. In simple reflex action, we may 
contemplate the response as made to a simple touch or blow ; 
in rational action the response is made to a great complication 
of external influences. The worm which curls up at a touch, 
and the commander of an army who guards against surprise 
and repels an attack along his whole line, illustrate the differ- 
ence. 

The spinal cord is the principal organ of the reflex system and 
like the brain it consists of white and gray matter. Both the 
spinal cord and the brain are developed from the same " prim- 
itive trace," showing their intimate genetic relation to each 
other. The bones, moreover, which inclose the brain are 
but modified vertebrae, showing the genetic relation of the 
two. The spinal cord has two distinct functions: the one 
is receptive, sensational, and centripetal; the other is imparting, 
motor, and centrifugal. So it is probable that the similar sub- 
stance performs a similar office in the brain. In the spinal cord 
with its outer connections, there is on the one side feeling, on 
the other motion; the one receives, the other sends out. In the 



Sec. 75.] MENTAL ACTION REFLEX. 121 

brain there are on the one side the impressions received from 
the stimulus of external things; on the other side, there is the 
impartation of executive purpose. Without these impressions 
from the outer world, the mind would be a blank, without 
thought and without will. This double action begins at the 
periphery and passing through the senses reaches the brain, 
whence it returns by nervous connections to the spinal cord and 
motor nerves to the external world, the place of beginning. 
This seems to be reflex action only become more complicated. 
In the case of the optic and olfactory nerves, the reflex action 
is directly from the brain, and in other instances it is from 
the medulla oblongata and spinal cord. It would be, of course, 
impossible in the present state of knowledge to show clearly the 
reflex nature of action in the higher phenomena of mind, and 
this may always remain an obscure subject; but analogical con- 
siderations point to the fact that in the higher as in the lower 
manifestations of mind — in the more complicated adaptation of 
the organism to its environment by complicated mental action, 
as well as in the simple adaptation which is effected by simple 
reflex action, the phenomena have the same type, similar to that 
of action and reaction in the physical world. 

G. H. Lewes, who believes that the process of sensation (as 
well as of thought) is triple, the third element being the ganglion 
which connects the afferent and efferent nerves, affirms that 
" sensation is a mental state under the same aspect that thought 
is a mental state; and that under the obverse aspect both are 
bodily states. In other words, both are functional activities of 
the sentient organism, involving the same structural conditions, 
the same laws of reaction, and differing only in the different 
proportions in which their elementary factors are combined." — 
(Problems of Life and Mind, Third Series, 267). Again : "The 
sexual instinct, the migratory instinct, the aggressive instinct, the 
social instinct may, indeed, 'act blindly,' if by that is meant 
that the animal has no distinct prevision of distant consequences; 
but they are sensorial processes of the same logical order as 
those which determine intelligent acts. The difference is this : 



122 ANTAGONISM IN MIND. \CJldp. XI. 

in the intelligent act there is interposed between the primary 
stimulation and the final response an excitation of residues of a 
wider experience; the stimulation rouses its retinue of nascent 
feelings, sometimes as auxiliaries, sometimes as checks, and 
among these are often 

' General truths, which are themselves a sort 
Of elements and agents, under powers 
Subordinate helpers of the living mind.' 

These are represented by ideas of duty, danger, convenience, or 
pleasure, and they determine the final impulse." — (Problems, 
Third, 99). 

The following is authority to the point, given by Lewes: "In 
1843 Griesinger — who appears to have known nothing of Dr. 
Laycock's paper — published his remarkably suggestive memoir 
on Psychical Reflexes in which he extends the principle of 
reflexion to all the cerebro-spinal centers. The whole course of 
subsequent research has confirmed this view ; so that we may 
say with Landry, 'L'existence du pouvoir reflexe dans l'enceph- 
ale ou dans quelques unes de ces parties etablit une nouvelle 
analogie entre le centre nerveux cranien et la moelle epiniere.' 
Indeed we have only to consider the laughter which follows a 
ludicrous idea, or the terror which follows a suggestion of dan- 
ger, — the varying and involuntary expression of emotion, — and 
the curious phenomena of imitation and contagion, — to see how 
large a place cerebral reflexion occupies."— (Phys. Basis, 454-5.) 
Again, Schiff in 1859, "thinks that so far from the actions of the 
cord being distinguishable from those of the brain by the char- 
acter of 'reflexion,' and depending on the mechanical arrange- 
ment — all actions, cerebral or spinal — are reflex; all depend on a 
mechanical arrangement." — (Phys. Basis, 45 9.) Huxley observes: 
" Descartes' line of argument is perfectly clear. He starts from 
reflex action in man, from the unquestionable fact that in our- 
selves co-ordinate purposive actions may take place without the 
intervention of consciousness or volition, or even contrary to the 
latter. As actions of a certain degree of complexity are brought 
about by mere mechanism, why may not actions of still greater 



SeC. 75.] COUNTER CURRENTS IN THE BRAIN. 1 23 

complexity be the result of a more refined mechanism." — (Corn- 
hill Mag.) 

The writer first met with this view in a little work published 
in 1863, and devoted exclusively to setting it forthi "Die 
Summe der aufnehmenden Geistesnerven nenne ich Vorstellungs- 
organ die Summe der bewegenden Geistesnerven nenne ich 
Willensorgan. Und wle durch die graue Substanz des Riicken- 
maiks ein Reflexverhaltniss zwischen den empfindenden und 
bewegenden Nerven, so wird auch durch die graue Substanz 
des Geisteshirns ein Reflexverhaltniss zwischen den vorstellen- 
den und wollenden Nerven vermittelt. Mit diesen Voraussetz- 
ungen werde ich versuchen das geheimnissvolle Getriebe der 
Geistesthiitigkeit auf einfache, bekannte Krafte zuruckzufiihren 
und die Geistesthatigkeit darzustellen als ein Reflexthatigkeit" — 
(Piderit, Gehirn u. Geist, 45, 46). 

Professor Bain observes that, "when the mind is in the exer- 
cise of its functions, the physical accompaniment is the pass- 
ing and repassing of innumerable streams of nervous influ- 
ence. Whether under a sensation of something actual, or under 
an emotion or an idea, or a train of ideas, the general operation 
is still the same. It seems as if we might say, no currents, no 
mind. The transmission of influence along the nerve fibres 
from place to place, seems the very essence of cerebral action." 
— (Senses and Intellect, 66.) This dynamical view of currents 
in the brain, we may supplement with a passage from Dr. 
Maudsley explicitly to the point under consideration: "Reflec- 
tion is then, in reality, the reflex action of the cells in their 
relations in the cerebral ganglia: it is the reaction of one cell 
to a stimulus from a neighboring cell, and the subsequent trans- 
ference of its energy to another cell — the reflection of it." — 
Physiology of Mind, 120.) As these currents cannot be seen, 
there is no doubt much of hypothesis in such views, but they 
indicate very plainly the tendency of the best informed thought 
on the subject. 

. The last word which I am able to utilize for this section is 
that of J. Luys on the Brain and its Functions. Not only is 



124 ANTAGONISM IN MIND. [Ckap. XL 

the fact of counter currents to and from the cerebral cortex 
recognized, but the road they travel is more distinctly pointed 
out than ever before. The impressions received from the outer 
world by the sensory nerves are carried to the optic thalamus, a 
small mass of gray substance in the center of the brain, and 
thence they are transmitted to the gray cortex of the cerebrum, 
whence they are sent on their return trip through the corpus 
striatum to the motor ganglions of the spinal axis to act on the 
muscular system. The afferent stream is no doubt modified by 
the optic thalamus on its way to the brain proper, and there 
modified again. The efferent stream is acted on by the corpus 
striatum assisted by the cerebellum, and thus fitted to play its 
part in adapting the organism to its outer conditions. The 
current begins at the periphery in relation to the external world, 
and it ends, for the most part, at the periphery in other rela- 
tions to the external world. It is from first to last an instance 
of action and reaction. 

Section 76. — Mental action might be defined as the response 
of an organized unit to the external forces which affect it. All 
phenomena are but the ever changing forms of adjustment. 
The unit of carbon plays between the objects of its attractions 
and repulsions, now drawn to and again driven away. And 
when it unites with other kinds of atoms to form molecules, the 
changes it undergoes are precisely those which are necessary to 
adapt it to surrounding objects according to the laws of its con- 
stitution. In like manner behaves the crystal; it takes on mat- 
ter and grows; and in default of suitable particles in its vicinity, 
it ceases to grow; and if submitted to the action of certain 
forces outside of it, it may disintegrate. In chemical union, the 
affinity of each atom or molecule for its fellow is a mutual 
action between them, and in chemical dissolution by heat or 
electricity, the repulsion of each particle for another is equal 
and opposite. In the inanimate world, the entire series of 
changes is the adaptation of the unit to its ever changing 
environment. It is the constant play of action and reaction. 
The same is true of the animate world. The vegetable is the 



Sec. ?6.] MENTAL RESPONSE TO ENVIRONMENT. 1 25 

response of an organic unit to the outside influences which 
affect it. No vegetable growth without moisture, heat, and light. 
The lowest animal form, however simple it may be, is but an 
organic unit in constant action and reaction with its external 
conditions. The amoeba? envelop organic atoms in an extem- 
porized stomach, and thus live and grow. This response to 
external things for definite ends comes by repetition, in forms a 
little higher, to lay the basis for a nervous system. Reflex 
action, or the answer of the organic unit to stimulus from with- 
out, takes place in animal forms without nerves; and such 
answer is still the highest function of simple animals with nerves; 
and under all circumstances is it the response of the animal 
unit to the external world. A little higher in the scale instinct- 
ive action arises — its field of play still lying between the creature 
and its environment. And when the creature rises in the scale 
to rationality, the sum of its functional activities consists in 
response to the conditions of its life by cognition thereof and 
adaptation thereto. It is still action and reaction become con- 
stantly more complicated in ascending the biological hierarchy. 
This is the function of the simplest forms of reflex action, it is 
the function of instinctive action, it is the function of intelli- 
gence. "When we call a man or animal intelligent, we mean 
that he shows a readiness in adapting his action to circum- 
stances; and he is more intelligent in proportion as he recog- 
nizes similarities amid diversities, and diversities amid similari- 
ties of circumstance, by these means guiding his conduct." 
— (Lewes). According to Herbert Spencer, "Every form of intel- 
ligence is in essence an adjustment of inner to outer rela- 
tions;" and that is what instinctive action is, and what reflex 
action is, and virtually what molecular and atomic action is. 
We do not agree with Nageli (Nature, October, 1877), in attrib- 
uting feeling, sensation, inclination, pleasure, to molecules. 
Still it must be admitted that there is an analogy between the 
impulse under which a molecule moves and that under which 
the animal moves, which is very striking. The animal seeking 
pleasure and avoiding pain is very much like the atom or mole- 
7 



126 ANTAGONISM IN MIND. [Chap. XI. 

cuie acting and reacting under the forces of attraction and 
repulsion. They are closely analogous, though not identical. 
The one is in a simple way very much what the other is in a 
complex way. Both remand us to the primary law of attraction 
and repulsion, and illustrate antagonism in the constitution of 
things. 

Section 77. — Mind cannot advance a step in the acquisition 
of knowledge, but by determining likeness and unlikeness in the 
perception of objects. This is the work which mind is con- 
stantly doing in its higher as well as in its lower activities. "In 
the lowest conceivable type of consciousness — that produced by 
the alternation of two states — there are involved the relations 
constituting the form of all thought." — (Spencer). Mentality 
depends on the act of comparing one feeling or impression with 
another, and so determining their relations of likeness, difference, 
contrast, opposition. If all impressions received from without 
were alike, there would be no consciousness, no mind. It is the 
experience of their differences by transition from one to another 
that makes possible the conception of both object and subject, 
these being; related as the poles of the magnet, each being 
absolutely necessary to the existence of the other. Without 
subject there could be no conception of object, and without 
objects there could be no conception of subject. All logical 
method, all mental activity as well as the physiological instru- 
mentalities of mind involve certain necessary elements of alterna- 
tion, contrast, opposition, antagonism. 

Section 78. — Another form of mental antithesis entitled to a 
place in this chapter may here be noted. Looking long at a 
bright color becomes offensive, and the complementary color 
often takes its place without external cause. An emotion long 
continued may become painful, and react into its opposite. A 
mind that is easily elated is apt to be easily depressed. By con- 
trast wit and humor often proceed from the saddest minds. 
The deprivation of freedom, or the suppression of desire invol- 
untarily awakens visions of the opposite state. Outrage to a 



Sec. yg.~\ mutual limitation of faculties. 127 

feeling calls up its antagonist, and the intensity of love may add 
fuel to hatred, as when, in war, the sex that is most tender- 
hearted and devoted as a friend becomes the most implacable 
as an enemy. Without emotional contrast there would be no 
emotion, no enjoyment, on the admitted principle, that if all 
flavors were alike, there would be no flavor at all. Even masses 
of men pass from one extreme to another. The universal 
enmity which characterized primitive man, reacted into an 
exaggerated estimate of hospitality at a later age. The puritan- 
ism of one period passes into the licentiousness of the next. 
At one extreme is asceticism, at the other dissoluteness, as history 
shows. The attempt to establish virtue by repression is apt to 
lead to the opposite. Notwithstanding the stringency of the 
Scotch kirk, licentiousness and drunkenness prevailed in unusual 
excess among the Scotch people, apparently as an offset to 
pietistic repression. According to Plato tyranny grows out of 
the license of unrestrained feedom. The outburst of freedom 
which the English experienced under Charles the First, reacted 
under the restoration into a striking indifference concerning free- 
dom and independence. The example, familiar to us all, of the 
alternation of mad speculation and extravagance with com- 
mercial depression and want, illustrate this same principle. The 
alternation of opposites in mental and moral phenomena, is but 
an example of action and reaction so familiar in the physical 
world; and the mind simply works in accordance with the habits 
of its development, now fixed as the law of its constitution. 

Section 79. — There is an antagonism in mental functions like 
that which obtains between growth and reproduction, or between 
the physical and mental in man. Excessive development of the 
one term implies under development with relative weakness in 
the other. Strongly emotional natures are not noted for 
intellectual clearness; and a great intellect is usually accom- 
panied with deficiency of emotion. It has been said that the 
great actors in the world's affairs are never deliberate thinkers. 
Their measures being promptly taken under a sort of intuitive 
impulse, they do not stop to weigh considerations. Emotion 



128 ANTAGONISM IN MIND. \Chap. XI. 

and intellect, action and thinking are not absolutely antagonistic, 
but to some extent they mutually exclude each other. This is, 
however, to a certain extent true of all faculties which draw 
upon the same store of supply for the energy of manifestation; 
what one gets beyond its due share is deprivation to the rest. 

Section 80. — Our mental constitution, however, does not 
lack for elements which are truly antagonistic in character. A 
list of the human passions and moods would bring this clearly 
into view. Joy and sorrow, hope and despair, cruelty and kind 
ness, courage and cowardice, faithfulness and treachery, malevo 
lence and benevolence, philanthropy and misanthropy, love and 
hatred, friendship and enmity, covetousness and prodigality, 
lewdness and chastity, virtue and vice, — and still more — in their 
simple and compound forms, a very long list. The language is 
rich in the names of passions and propensities which lead to 
discord and unhappiness, as envy, jealousy, suspicion, depres- 
sion, sadness, despondency, melancholy, malignity, anger, 
revenge, lasciviousness, lust, and still many others. 

The craniologists of the Gallian school, with all due deference 
tc the prevailing prejudice concerning the essential harmony of 
all nature and the original innocence of man, treated the baser 
elements of the human character as "perversions:" whatever is 
not entirely compatible with the moral sentiments has been 
perverted from its original beneficent character. Dr. J. R. 
Buchanan, however, a craniologist of some originality, taught 
that the legitimate functions of certain tracts of brain were by 
their nature discordant and base. He divided the brain by a 
plane, above which the tendency of activity is upward, elevating, 
good; and below which it is downward, depressing, evil. With- 
out endorsing this writer's philosophy or methods, it is safe, 
nevertheless, to affirm that his doctrine concerning the charac- 
teristics of the passions and propensities, is much more philo- 
sophical than that of the Gallians and other optimists. We 
only know human nature by its manifestations; and when we 
see a mental quality like that of the destructive instinct in all 
the races of mankind, we must accept it as a normal constituent 



SeC. 80.] THE NEW PHRENOLOGY. I 29 

of human nature. A strong feeling of benevolence or caution 
may suppress the manifestations of the destructive impulses, 
but that does not change their character. Just so far as they 
have any existence at all, they are destructive. And since 
mankind riave in all ages given abundant expression to this 
propensity, not only using it on necessary occasions, but vol- 
untarily making the occasions for its indulgence, it would be 
very singular if it did not now constitute a part of mental pro- 
pension ingrained into the human constitution. If man had 
not been a destructive creature, he could have had no con- 
tinued existence on this planet; and his present supremacy is 
due mainly to the fact that he has been the greatest of all 
destroyers. 

Perhaps we should be puzzled to identify the conditions which 
have given rise to such passions as envy, hatred, revenge, etc., 
but it is not necessary that we shall. These are no doubt to a cer- 
tain extent instances of correlated development, in which a 
useful and indispensable thing is necessarily accompanied by 
adjuncts of a kindred nature, whether with or without utility. 
The natural arms of animals for self-defense may be used for 
wanton and aimless attack. If military genius were content 
with order and peace as its end it would be a blessing, but it is 
only too apt in its madness for exercise to spread desolation at 
home and abroad. It is a paradox of endowment by uniform 
sequence that when there is enough for the end to be accom- 
plished, there is quite sure to be at the same time a sporadic 
surplus. 

No appeal can be made to the New Phrenology of Ferrier, 
Bastion and others. Its advances, slow and careful, have 
scarcely yet passed beyond the motor centers, localizing some 
of these, and admitting the general division of the cerebrum 
into an intellectual region in the frontal brain, a motor region 
in the middle lobes, and a sensitive region back of the latter, or 
interblended with other centers. It appears rather to eschew 
the division of the mind into distinct faculties, because, since 
mind is but the adjustment of inner and outer relations, the 



130 ANTAGONISM IN MIND. [Chap. XI. 

faculties have gradually arisen in answer to constantly more 
complicated conditions of life, and do not, therefore, admit of 
distinct demarcations in a physiological system. — (Bastion, 
Brain as the Organ of Mind, 519). But we submit that this is 
precisely the way in which the different functions of the body 
have arisen, and yet they are as distinct as the organs with which 
they are associated. In a similar way, also, have species come 
into existence, and yet naturalists treat them as distinct, just as 
psychologists may treat the faculties of the mind. And if there 
are motor centers in the gray tissue of the brain, it is very likely 
that there are, also, sensitive and intellectual centers with which 
different kinds of intellection and different kinds of sensation, 
feeling, and emotion are especially identified. But, little is 
known of this, and I only refer to it in justification of the use 
herein made of distinct mental faculties. 

Section 81. — The very faculties which give to man spirit and 
power for defense and attack as the means of maintaining his 
existence and extending his empire, require a certain measure of 
balancing, else they would run riot, and defeat the end in view. 
Hence there is in every sane individual of the race two classes 
of faculties whose impulses antagonize each other. The moral 
and intellectual nature must oppose the strain of the passions 
and propensities, else these would lead to inevitable disorder and 
ruin, But this contest is not within the individual only; it takes 
place between individuals, and thus becomes social. The same 
impulses which were against the better sentiments in the indi- 
vidual, are liable to come in conflict with like impulses in other 
individuals. Two persons much given to aggression would very 
soon encounter each other. So with groups; in their raids for 
sustenance, they would meet with other groups on common 
ground, and fight for the mastery. Every individual and every 
group seeking its own ends, could not but come in conflict with 
other individuals and groups. In such a state " private appe- 
tite " would be " the measure of good and evil," and Hobbes 
was right in regarding " the condition of mere nature " as " the 



SeC. $Z.] DISCORDANT IMPULSES ANTAGONIZED. 131 

condition of war." It was the result of individuality seeking 
the satisfaction of its wants. 

The discordant impulses in man are thus doubly antagonized, 
first, by the higher instincts in the same individual, and secondly, 
by the same discordant impulses in other individuals; and out 
of these conflicting elements of character arise the phenomena 
of moral control. Anger in one finds its limitation in the equal 
anger of another, and self-preservation renders mutual restraint 
necessary. In existing society, an individual who does not 
restrain his dangerous impulses, is himself soon crushed out of 
existence by an orderly power whose means of destruction are 
greatly superior to his own. The integrity of society is largely 
maintained by the balanced antagonism of like propensities in 
its constituents, and the moral control which grows out of it; 
just as the physical individual is kept erect by the balancing of 
antagonistic muscles under the unitizing control of the medulla 
oblongata. 

But in society this balancing of the passions and impulses is 
a very complicated affair, even more so than the balancing of 
the meteorological elements. Equilibrium in either case never 
comes about. There is violence and discord in the elements, 
and vice and crime in society. To say that these are incidental 
and transitory is to ignore the plainest teachings of history and 
science. There are infinite forms of conflict in the physical and 
in the organic worlds; why should there not be in the mental 
and social worlds ? Man's nature is the theater of conflict, 
because he has grown up in the midst of conflict, and has been 
molded by it. Man's mental and physical mold is what it is, 
precisely because it is the best attainable to resist the opposing 
forces which have pitilessly assailed him from the beginning till 
now. Man epitomizes within himself the antagonism which 
prevails in the sphere with which his experience has had to do. 
In this sphere conflict is ineradicable; therefore to extinguish 
the potencies of conflict in man would be to unfit him for his 
environment, and ensure his speedy destruction. 

That there is passional antagonism within man, and between 



132 ANTAGONISM IN MIND. \Chdp. XI' 

man and man by the necessities of the human constitution is a 
fact so obvious that there would be no need of insisting on it, 
but for its relation to the leading idea of this treatise. The 
statement of it has often been made. Plato conceives of mind 
as a chariot drawn by a team of winged horses, one of which is 
good, the other vicious. The trouble is to get the horses to 
move along together; for one of them being of inferior nature, 
is liable, unless well trained, to force the vehicle out of its proper 
course, in spite of the driver. This, of course, implies that the 
lower propensities and present impulses are liable to have their 
way instead of the higher sentiments, with their remoter and 
finer gratifications. The philosophy of Combe's Constitution 
of Man which has had such widespread influence is built upon 
this conception. And even thus, Spinoza as given by Froude : 
"There are pleasures of sense and pleasures of intellect; a 
thousand tastes, tendencies, and inclinations form our mental 
composition; and since one contradicts another, and each has 
its tendency to become dominant, it is only in the harmonious 
equipoise of their several activities, in their due and just sub- 
ordination, that any unity of action or consistency of feeling is 
possible." — (Brief Studies, 308). Pope sings it as follows : 

"Love, hope, and joy, fair pleasure's smiling train, 
Hate, fear, and grief, the family of pain; 
These mixed with art, and to due bounds confined, 
Make and maintain the balance of the mind : 
The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife 
Gives all the strength and color of our life." 

It is stated in a more general way by Rousseau: "En medi- 
tant sur la nature de l'homme j' y crus decouvrir deux principes 
distincts dont l'un l'elevait a l'etude des verites eternelles, a 
l'amour de la justice et du beau moral, aux regions du monde 
intellectual, dont la contemplation fait les delices du sage ; et 
dont l'autre le ramenait bassement en lui-meme, l'asservessait a 
l'empire des sense, aux passions qui sont leurs ministers, et con- 
trariat par ellestout ce que lui inspiraitle sentiment du premier." 
— (Emile, 329). 

Guizot observes in his Lectures on the General History ol Civ- 



Sec. 8l.] BALANCE OF THE PASSIONS. 133 

ilization (pp. 117, 118) that, "Events are not so prompt in their 
consequences as the human mind in its deductions. There is 
in all things a mixture of good and evil, so profound, so insepa- 
rable, that, in whatever part you penetrate, if even you descend to 
the lowest elements of society, or into the soul itself, you will 
there find these two principles dwelling together, developing 
themselves side by side, perpetually struggling and quarrelling 
with each other, but neither of them ever obtaining a complete 
victory, or absolutely destroying its fellow. Human nature never 
reaches to the extreme either of good or evil. It passes, with- 
out ceasing, from one to the other ; it recovers itself at the 
moment when it seems lost forever. It slips and loses ground 
at the moment when it seems to have assumed the firmest posi- 
tion." 

It is given by Buckle as follows: "Of the different passions 
with which we are born, some are more prevalent at one time, 
some at another ; but experience teaches us that, as they are 
always antagonistic, they are held in balance by the forces of 
their own opposition. The activity of one motive is corrected 
by the activity of another." — (History , Civilization, I., 163). 
"The actions of individuals are greatly affected by their moral 
feelings and by their passions; but these being antagonistic to 
the passions and feelings of other individuals, are balanced by 
them.'*'— (165). 

Section 82. — The will is itself a theater of conflict. When- 
ever an animal elects to do one of two or more possible 
acts, there is conflict, however feeble and obscure, in the deter- 
mination of the will. The strongest immediate impulse, to 
whatever that strength may be due, will determine the action. 
It is just the same further on in the scale. The influences which 
act in determining the will greatly multiply and become more 
complicated as we rise into the higher regions of mind. The 
strong impulse in prospect of immediate gratification does not 
now always carry; the impulse or motive of long range which 
was totally unknown lower down in the scale acquires great 
weight. The happiness in view may now be put off till later in 



134 ANTAGONISM IN MIND. [Chap. XI. 

life or even till the next life. The act of willing would be 
greatly modified and exalted by such a consideration. But 
under the highest moral and religious guidance, it is still true, 
that the strongest impulse determines the will. Hartley said : 
"The will appears to be nothing but a desire or aversion, suffi- 
ciently strong to produce an action that is not automatic, pri- 
marily, or secondarily. . . . The will is, therefore, 
that desire or aversion which is strongest for the present time." 
"Which mental mood," adds Bastion, " is to prevail is sometimes 
immediately settled, and at other times only after a process of 
deliberation, and concerning this process, Hobbes says: 'The 
whole sum of desires, aversions, hopes, and fears, continued till 
the thing be either done or thought impossible, is what we call 
deliberation."' — (Brain Organ of Mind, 551, 552). If "imme- 
diately settled," there is little conflict and it is soon over; delib- 
eration is the prolonged conflict of counter-considerations, which 
the ultimate determination of the will closes. 



CHAPTER XII. 

CONFLICT AS A FACTOR IN MORALS. 

Section 83. — Before life was on the planet there were no bio- 
logical laws; in like manner, before the existence of society, there 
were no moral laws. The existence of society implies a certain 
degree of order, and order implies system, and system in society 
implies moral government Then whence came society? Very 
largely out of the association which comes of conflict. The battle 
of life determines whether an animal with certain needs shall be 
social or solitary. Utility presides over the result, and battle 
determines it. Birds and beasts of prey mostly live alone and 
hunt alone ; it is easiest thus to satisfy hunger and live. Hawks, 
eagles, owls, lions, and many others succeed best on the lone 
hunt, and their habits are solitary. Pelicans help one another 
by fishing together ; wolves attack large prey, and they hunt in 
pairs or packs. Birds and animals which feed in flocks and 
herds assist one another in discovering enemies, and even in 
self-defense against them. They sometimes place sentinels, and 
sometimes the stronger ones give battle to the enemy. 

But conflict relates not merely to the contest with other crea- 
tures for prey, or to avoid becoming prey. It is not altogether 
figurative that life has so often been called a battle. Every 
creature that lives has to maintain a struggle with the fatalities 
of life, or else be overcome in the struggle and die. Especially 
does this appear in taking care of the young. The young must 
be protected against the inclemencies of the weather, and against 
living enemies, and they must be fed at whatever cost. In all 
this there is struggle, and being thus compelled by the exigencies 
of life to remain together for a certain period of time, there is 
incipient habit formed, which, if not thwarted by other exigen- 
cies of life of opposite tendency, persists, and the animal 



136 CONFLICT IN MORALS. [Chap. XII. 

becomes gregarious and social. If in addition to this, it suc- 
ceeds better in company than alone in procuring subsistence, it 
is sure to feed in company with its fellows, and it becomes so 
habituated to the presence of its kind, that it is uneasy and dis- 
contented when alone. "The perception of kindred beings, per- 
petually seen, heard, and smelt, will come to form a predominant 
part of consciousness — so predominant a part that absence of it 
will invariably cause discomfort." — (Spencer.) Thus originated 
the social habits of animals ; and all social animals have what 
corresponds to the moral status of society in the form of regu- 
lation and order. " All animals living in a body which defend 
each other or attack their enemies in concert, must be in some 
degree faithful to each other; and those that follow a leader 
must be in some degree obedient." — (Darwin.) The valiant 
bulls or baboons which come to the defense of the weaker mem- 
bers of the herd or troop, perform an action at their individual 
risk, which redounds to the good of the society ; and among 
mankind such actions are called moral. If through the coward- 
ice of some of those natural defenders of the troop or herd, the 
defense had proved too weak and let in the ravages of the 
enemy, that dastardliness of behavior would be clearly immoral. 
The good to the community from a general line of conduct on 
the part of individuals, establishes that conduct as commendable 
and meritorious ; and in any instance the lapse of such conduct 
would be moral recreancy resulting in injury to the community. 
The impulses which cause animals to stand at bay are simply 
those of self-defense, which have arisen out of individualism and 
the conflict which attends it. If, in the case of any troop or 
herd, the battle-givers were always overcome, they would cease 
to offer resistance, and would always run, leaving the less fleet 
to be taken. Whatever the habits of living things in this 
respect, whether of flight or battle, utility determines the habit. 
A very little intellectual endowment enables creatures to deter- 
mine the situation, and to adopt such course as is best for the 
community. Birds on solitary islands, unused to sportsmen, are 
not afraid of them, but they would very soon learn to be. A 



Sec. <%".] ORDER AMONG ANIMALS. 137 

flock of domestic fowls are not afraid of a man with a gun if he 
never shoots any of them \ but if he fires two or three times and 
kills, the survivors will always take to flight whenever they spy 
him gun in hand. Among all gregarious animals, the notice of 
danger, whether by noise or action, or both, is that upon which 
the good of the community largely depends, and which has to 
such community a moral value. And all these mutual relations 
concerning safety and well-being, whether we call them moral 
or not, grow out of the conditions of conflict in which the 
species is placed. 

Section 84. — Within their own communities without regard 
to external friends or enemies, social animals have their social 
order largely determined by contests of strength and cunning. 
The males determine by battle which are to be masters, and the 
strongest and most alert thereby largely secure a monopoly of 
the parental function. After defeat the weaker usually accept 
the situation, and with all proper deference concede the assumed 
rights of their superiors. Even the females have their battles 
to determine which shall have precedence at the watering 
trough or common rack. And once conflict has settled the 
question of precedence, the terror of the law secures its own 
observance. Out of all this grows a certain degree of order in 
gregarious communities by the deference of the inferior to the 
superior. It is a consequence of experience. Not to observe 
it brings pain ; obedience to the law avoids pain. Thus the 
most incipient form of order in community, of which we know 
anything, grows out of various forms of conflict, and is simply 
action in the direction of least resistance. 

Section 85. — When animals become domesticated and have 
to do with man, their relations become very much more com- 
plicated, thereby adding to the rules which govern conduct. If 
an ox attempts to gore his master or his master's horse, a cow to 
kick the milkmaid, a dog to snap at the children or worry the 
sheep, a goat to butt the passer-by, a horse to kick, bite, or 
balk, or any animal to jump over or break through fences, so 



138 CONFLICT IN MORALS. [Chap. XI L 

far they are all wanting in the proper orderly or moral quality, 
and there is discord in their relations with one another and with 
man. How is it that animals inclined to be unruly are made 
sufficiently orderly to behave in a becoming manner ? First of 
all it should be shown by kind treatment that we are their 
friends, to disarm hostility and awaken sympathy. An animal 
is precisely like a man in this respect. Convince him that we 
mean well toward him, and we shall get along with him better 
than if we treat him in an ungentlemanly way. But some 
animals like some men do not fully appreciate kindness. Some 
savages interpret kind treatment as evidence of fear ; some 
horses take very much the same view of it. I have heard a 
farmer say to illustrate the human frailty, " they are like some 
critters ; they don't know when they are well off." In such 
instances then, what is to be done? Very often the only 
method is to make disorder or immorality painful. Morality is 
established by the fact that " the way of the transgressor is 
hard." Allow me to illustrate: 

" Uncle Sam " had seen service in the army, and bore upon 
his shoulder the honorable "U. S." After the war he took to 
farming like many another of his kind. Just lately he had been 
shifted from his usual stall to another, next which stood a cow 
with only a short partition between. Sam may have taken 
umbrage at this as an indignity; anyway, he backed down on his 
stable companion, and compelled her to keep close in the 
corner of her stall for safety. "One morning," said his keeper, 
"as I stepped up behind bossy, Sam let his heels fly, and they 
just reached my left shoulder. If I had been two feet closer, 
the blow would have sent me whirling — may be into eternity. 
I suddenly reached for a piece of board, and now it was Sam's 
turn to shrink himself into the smallest possible compass and 
hunt a corner. He was so conscious of deserving all he got 
that he made no resistance, and I shortly brought the chastise- 
ment to an end. Sam had kicked at me supposing it was his 
neighbor, and I now expected him to look out for me, but still 
to keep up his persecution against her. But in a day or two, I 



Sec. £5.] RUDIMENTAL MORALITY. 1 39 

observed that she would back across his stall and almost rest 
against his heels with safety." Sam was wise in his way, and of 
general good moral character, and this one experience of suffer- 
ing for misdemeanor had sufficed to bring him back to his former 
course of general good behavior. 

The following from "3758" (Atlantic Monthly, January, 
1880), further illustrates this principle: Caleb is made to say, 
"There's that Zeke; he's as hefty a beast to manage as I ever 
laid eyes on. But Thomas has the right kind o' notion; as 
long as a creatur's green and blunders from not knowin' any 
better, he is as gentle as a girl. But if they are ugly and 
chock full of malice, then he shows 'em who is master. But 
it is merciful in the long run ; " and he goes on to give 
details wherein it is shown that the animal behaves better 
because he finds out that good behavior saves painful experi- 
ence. And further, "Caleb had occasion to chuckle more than 
once at the clever way in which Thomas led a refractory steer 
or colt in the paths of wisdom, until he became a gentle and 
well-trained animal." And then Thomas is made to tell his 
betrothed how he managed a yoke of balky steers on the con- 
flict principle, and he declares "it had the desired effect in ton- 
ing up their morals, so that they did not soger [balk] any 
more." 

The training of pointer dogs illustrates the same view. If 
the novice violate the code pointer, he is made to suffer till he 
learns that the breaking of rules always fetches up in disappoint- 
ment and pain, and that self-restaint and obedience bring the 
greater balance of pleasure in the long run. This affords a very 
apt illustration of the conflict which the maintenance of good 
morals always implies. It is always a victory, and often a vic- 
tory after a hard fought battle with the passions. It is the re- 
straint of an immediate impulse for a remote gratification. The 
young pointer is burning with eagerness to break for the game, 
but if he does he spoils the work, and is made to suffer for it ; 
if he exercises the necessary self-restraint, and the game is 



140 CONFLICT IN MORALS. [Chap. XII. 

secured, a burst of happiness unalloyed with pain is the full 
reward of his virtue. 

The intelligent watch-dog will not touch his master's stores, 
but bide his time for his proper share and reward. It comes of 
experience which finds treachery and theft painful, and faithful- 
ness and honesty pleasurable in the end, — not the experience of 
one animal only, but of his ancestors of many generations. 
Self-restraint is less painful than the penalty of violated law; the 
cost of right-doing is less than the cost of wrong-doing; and 
intelligent animals very soon learn this ; and such use of intelli- 
gence is one of the necessary elements of virtue in its simpler 
and more common forms. There is a subtlety of inference in 
the intellects of many species of animals, which is little sus- 
pected by those who are not familiar with their ways, or who 
are prevented from understanding them by a prejudice which 
assumes a necessary qualitative difference between brute and 
human intelligence. This subtlety of inference reaches to some- 
what remote as well as to present consequences. The rooks 
which banish or kill one of their number that persists in stealing 
after the infliction of lighter punishments; the birds which dis- 
tinguish between an armed and an unarmed man, and also 
between the bow and the rifle in the hands of enemies (Living- 
ston); the arctic foxes which cut the twine (and then take the 
bait) which else would fire the gun and kill (Ray); the terrier 
which called his mistress' attention to the cat's theft in another 
room, restraining meanwhile his own impulses to take the beef- 
steak from the offender for his own use; — these and previous 
examples of this section go to show the subtlety of inference and 
the rudiments of self-control in birds and animals which are by 
no means highest in the scale of intelligence. A writer in the 
Quarterly Journal of Science says concerning the behavior of 
the terrier in the last example given : " It is as clear a case of 
self-determination — of appetite and passion governed by the 
will — as any which human biography can show." That animals 
may hold their immediate impulses in abeyance in view of 
remoter ends, no one acquainted with their actions can, for a 



Sec 86.] AUTHORITATIVENESS IN MORALS. 141 

moment, doubt; and this control of immediate impulses for 
remoter ends is, in man, one of the essential conditions of 
morality, without which human society would not be possible. 

Section 86. — Illustrations of the influence of painful and 
pleasurable feeling in determining the behavior of animals might 
be given almost without limit, and I may not have selected the 
best; but those given will be sufficient to show the play of antag- 
onism in bringing about orderly or moral conduct in the lowest 
forms of society. What is true in this respect of animals, is 
true in a much more complicated way of mankind. There are 
different and conflicting classes of feeling, and in the determi- 
nation of conduct, one class or the other must prevail. " We 
have seen," observes Herbert Spencer, " that during the progress 
of animate existence, the later-evolved, more compound, and 
more representative feelings, serving to adjust the conduct to 
more distant and general needs, have all along had an authority 
as guides superior to that of the earlier and simpler feelings — 
excluding cases in which these last are intense. This superior 
authority, unrecognizable by lower types of creatures which can- 
not generalize and little recognized by primitive men, who have 
but feeble powers of generalization, has become distinctly recog- 
nized as civilization and accompanying mental development have 
gone on. Accumulated experiences have produced the con- 
ciousness that guidance by feelings which refer to remote and 
general results, is usually more conducive to welfare than guid- 
ance by feelings to be immediately gratified. For what is the 
common character of the feelings that prompt honesty, truthful- 
ness, diligence, providence, etc., which men habitually find to be 
better prompters than the appetites and simple impulses ? They 
are all complex, re-representative feelings, occupied with the 
future rather than with the present. The idea of authoritative- 
ness has therefore come to be connected with feelings having 
these traits; the implication being that the lower simpler feelings 
are without authority. And this idea of authoritativeness is one 
element in the abstract consciousness of duty." — (Data of 
Ethics). 



142 CONFLICT IN MORALS. \Chap. XII. 

This recognizes the conflict between two classes of feelings, 
and defines which class should direct conduct. The more com- 
plex feelings having reference to future gratification should pre- 
vail over the simpler feelings which are concerned only with the 
present; that is, regulated conduct is preferable to random con- 
duct. The guiding principle of well regulated life was finely 
stated in a somewhat old-fashioned way, about a century and a 
half ago, by Francis Hutcheson : " The chief happiness of any 
being must consist in the full enjoyment of all the gratifications 
its nature desires and is capable of; or if its nature admits of a 
variety of pleasures of different and sometimes inconsistent 
kinds, some of them also higher and more durable than others, 
its supreme happiness must consist in the most constant enjoy- 
ment of the more intense and durable pleasures, with as much 
of the lower gratifications as consists with the full enjoyment of 
the higher. In like manner, if we cannot ward off all pain, 
and if there be different kinds and degrees of it, we must secure 
ourselves against the more intense and durable kinds, and the 
highest degrees of them; and that sometimes by bearing the 
lower kinds or degrees, or by sacrificing some smaller pleasures, 
when 'tis necessary for this end." — (Moral Philosophy, Vol. I., 
ioo). 

This recognizes the highest happiness principle and states the 
ground of its application. Further on he insists on the mani- 
fest inconsistencies among even the higher pleasures, and their 
incompatibility in the fruition; and affirms that some of them 
are much increased by the consciousness of having sacrificed 
the lower to the higher. Earlier in the volume (pp. 12, 13), he 
presents an array of conflicting tendencies in human conduct : 
" The difference between the calm motions of the will and pas- 
sionate, whether of the selfish or benevolent kinds, must be 
obvious to any one who considers how often we find them acting 
in direct opposition." Anger and lust, he continues, draw one 
way, and a calm regard for some interest or our own good will 
draw the opposite way. A passion may conquer a calm princi- 
ple, or be conquered by it. Some motive will prompt to spend- 



Sec. 86.] MORAL BALANCE. 1 43 

thrift expenses, while another will protest against the extravagance. 
In sending off a child or friend at some risk for improvement, 
one class of faculties is gratified and another made uneasy. In 
correcting children, putting restraints upon them, or setting 
them uneasy tasks, the parent is actuated by conflicting feelings. 
The love of life overcomes our repugnance to abstinence, pain- 
ful cures, nauseous potions. 

A passage from Shaftesbury, who is utilitarian in his views of 
morality, is fairly modern in its method of pointing out the need 
of restraint to secure the proper balance of the passions: 
"Whoever is the least versed in this moral kind of architecture, 
will find the inward fabric so adjusted, and the whole so nicely 
built, that the barely extending of a single passion a little too 
far, or the continuance of it too long, is able to bring irrecover- 
able ruin and misery. He will find this experienced in the 
ordinary case of phrensy and distraction ; when the mind dwell- 
ing too long upon one subject (whether prosperous or calamitous) 
sinks under the weight of it, and proves what the necessity is, 
of a due balance and counterpoise in the affections. He will find 
that in every different creature and distinct sex, there is a differ- 
ent and distinct order, set, or suit of passions; proportionable 
to the different order of life, the different functions and capacities 
assigned to each. As the operations and effects are different, so 
are the springs and causes in each system. The inside work is 
fitted to the outward action and performance." — (Characteristics, 
II., 135.) This, in the moral sphere, we think must be accepted 
as a clear anticipation of the modern doctrine in the organic 
sphere that life, feeling, intelligence are the adjustment of one 
set of relations to another, the inner to the outer. 

Professor Archibald Campbell, of Edinburgh, who early in the 
last century took Hobbes and Mandeville to task, hitting aside 
of the one and yielding to the other more than he imagined, 
reduced the several affections of the mind to either hatred or 
love, and affirmed " that all our actions, of whatever sort, do 
originally spring from one or other of these two principles." He 
settles the strife between self-love and other-love as follows: 



144 CONFLICT IN MORALS. \CllCLp. XII. 

" And therefore matters thus far do by no means depend upon 
arbitrary will or humor, but are fixed, eternal, unchangeable: 
which gives us plainly to understand, that if ever we expect to 
have the favor and commendation of those beings with whom 
we are joined in society, we must necessarily adapt our behavior 
to the gratification of their self-love, or their natural desire of 
well-being. This is the method we must needs take ; and there 
is manifestly no other course whatsoever, that can at all serve 
our purpose." — (Enquiry into the Original of Moral Virtue, 103, 
104). The author then goes on to state his scheme of moral 
duties, which is throughout utilitarian and altruistic. This virtue 
of the renunication of self in the interest of self is more artist- 
ically presented by a modern writer on Moral Science, Dr. L. 
P. Hickok, already quoted on Cosmology. "The animal [in 
man] is impelled by a craving, the rational is inspired by a claim. 
The difference between these two is very broad. A craving is 
always going out towards something it can get, a claim is always 
going out towards something it can give, or can be. A craving 
seeks a self-gratification ; a claim requires a self-surrender, per- 
haps a self-sacrifice. The self which the craving seeks, is not 
found, but is lost in the very process of its seeking; while the 
self which the claim surrenders, is not lost, but is found in its 
very surrender." 

G. H. Lewes : "No one supposes that our desires are free. 
Such freedom as there is consists in the conflict of desires, and 
the choice is determined by the predominance of the most 
urgent; and this predominance is partly due to the strength of 
the immediate stimulus, and partly to the vision of possibilities 
and consequences which the desire awakens. It is here that 
desire passes into volition ; so that, however powerful a stimulus 
may be in exciting a desire, if it be connected in experience 
with painful consequences, we are thereby educated to resist the 
desire, or to avoid incurring the stimulus which awakens it. 
Because the will is thus the abstract expression of the product 
of experience, it is educable, and becomes amenable to the 
moral law, as architecture is amenable to mechanical laws, and 



$&£ £6.] PHYSIOLOGY OF CONFLICTING IMPULSES. 1 45 

as thinking is amenable to knowledge." — (The Study of Psy- 
chology, 109). This is bringing the subject largely into the 
domain of physiology, and it is possible to go still further in this 
direction. A writer in the London Times speaks of a true 
volition which is " capable of great development in two different 
directions — first, as an inhibitory power, to restrain either reflex or 
sensorial or ideo-motor impulses from going out into action — to 
hold the machine of the body still in spite of them ; secondly, as a 
selecting power, to retain certain ideas before the consciousness 
to the exclusion of others, to 'dwell' upon them by deliberate 
choice, and thus to derange the balance of mere experience, and 
to give to the selected ideas an increased weight in determining 
the conduct." "With regard to the first of these points, it is 
necessary to revert to the account already given of the difference 
between sensori-motor and ideo-motor action, and to show that, 
as it is the natural tendency of an undeveloped nervous system 
to perform the humbler rather than the higher function, to allow 
impressions made upon the sensorium to expend themselves in 
sensori-motor action rather than to pass on through the sensorium 
and to excite ideas, it should be the constant endeavor of the 
educator to overcome this tendency, and so to direct and reiter- 
ate the impressions made by teaching that ideas should in time 
become their habitual results." 

George Pouchet in the Revue des Deux Mondes : "Between 
the currents ascending the spinal cord and those going out from 
the brain the conflict may be said to be permanent. There is 
an antagonism, an almost constant struggle for influence, 
between the two centres, the one the seat of the higher faculties 
characterizing animal life, the other ruling the functions of vege- 
tative life. It is this which moralists have called, in reasonable 
enough terms in this case, the spirit and the flesh. The only 
inquiries of philosophers into the mechanism of our passions 
which have any importance belong to the account very often 
given already, of these relations between the moral and the 
physical. Physiologists in their turn study and verify that 
antagonism, without, however, explaining it any better than 



146 CONFLICT IN MORALS. [Chap. XII. 

moralists or philosophers have done, while still seeking for the 
precise seat. Sometimes it occurs that currents coming from 
the spinal cord conceal, thwart, or destroy those that flow down 
from the brain, and sometimes the reverse happens." 

These several views from writers of the last two hundred 
years go to show how varied the views of thinking men may be 
in regard to the conflict of higher and lower feelings in deter- 
mining conduct, and yet, how all agree substantially concerning 
what feelings should obtain and hold the mastery. Whether 
the method of looking at the subject be metaphysical, psycho- 
logical, or psycho-physical, it has essentially the same result. 
The living of a worthful life assumes the form of a triumph 
after conflict between two classes of faculties which are liable to 
antagonize each other. A member of society who yields to 
unrestrained impulses is regarded as a character that is "un- 
balanced." Virtue implies the constant maintenance of the 
required balance, and consists in the regulation of conduct on 
principle. Life is exalted when it secures self-interest through 
justice to others and promotes the interest of others through 
justice to self. 

In all cases of conflict between the selfish interests of the 
individual and the general interests of society, the former is by 
a natural law of force subordinated to the latter, and for this 
reason that it secures a larger balance of happiness in the aggre- 
gate ; and herein obtains the paradox, that, in waiving" personal 
considerations, the individual is most surely subserving personal 
interests. A part of the Commandments are founded on this 
principle. The coveting of whatever is rightfully another's 
serves the individual's pursuit of happiness far better in the 
renunciation than in the gratification. The existence of society 
is incompatible with the unrestrained gratification of the desires. 
Hence, the good of the individual as of society is best found in 
the rigid observance of the moral law. It is the balancing of 
motives and acts, in which the more remote and greater out- 
weighs the more immediate and less. That is the greater 
because it involves only self-denial which is itself a form of vie- 



SeC. 8/.] THE LEADING ELEMENT OF MORALS. 147 

tory imparting pleasure ; while this is the less because it pro- 
vokes hostility and brings pain equal to and often greater than 
the gratification. The one leaves a margin in favor of the indi- 
vidual, the other does not. 

Section 87. — A great many attempts have been made from 
ancient times till the present to find the leading element, of 
morals, that which comprehends all the rest and reduces them 
to order. Propriety, prudence, benevolence, or altruism, sym- 
pathy, balance of the passions, the due medium, the golden 
mean — all have at one time or other, or place, been pushed to 
the front, and all have a certain truth in them, but it is not till 
we reach the conception of utility as measured by the outcome 
of the greatest happiness that we have in hand a principle which 
assumes the mastery and co-ordinates all the rest into a well- 
balanced system. But utility derives its importance from the 
conflict among impulses, passions, faculties, which it is the func- 
tion of the guiding principle to adjust. In all times, whatever 
gave offense to society and created pain was placed under ban 
as immoral ; that which brought good and gave pleasure was 
commended and retained as a component part of the moral sys- 
tem. In this way, through the play of good and evil, pleasure 
and pain, has been determined the proper balance of conduct, 
the due medium, the mutual adjustment of egoism and altruism 
— that coming to be regarded as meritorious which usually pro- 
motes the interest of the greatest number or those having the 
greatest power. Every writer on morals recognizes the doctrine 
of utility, even when he disavows it. Curious examples might 
be given of this. It is Hume who says that, whatever the prin- 
ciples writers set out with, they are sure "to assign as the ulti- 
mate reason for every rule which they establish, the convenience 
and necessities of mankind;" and that, "a concession thus 
extorted, in opposition to systems, has more authority than if it 
had been made in prosecution of them." — (General Principles 
of Morality). 

The greatest happiness principle necessarily concerns the 
individual as well as society, and utility actually determines the 



I48 CONFLICT IN MORALS. \CJiap. XI L 

conflict of jurisdiction between the two. And in general it may 
be said truly that there is nothing adjusted in society any more 
than in the physical world, but through stress — the action of one 
thing upon another. The physical forces, the written laws of the 
state, and the unwritten laws of society act and counter-act to 
shape the life of man. J. Fitzjames Stephen called it "compul- 
sion, '' and puts the case heroically and soundly: "It seems, 
then, that compulsion in its most formidable shape and on the 
most extensive scale — the compulsion of war — is one of the 
principles which lie at the root of national existence. It deter- 
mines whether they are to be and what they are to be. It 
decides what men shall believe, and how they shall live, in what 
mould their religion, law, morals, and the whole tone of their 
lives shall be cast. It is the ratio ultima not only of kings, but 
of human society in all its shapes. It determines precisely, for 
one thing, how much and how little individual liberty is to be 
left to exist at any specified time and place."— (Liberty, Equality, 
Fraternity, 169). Whatever the outcome, it is a case of stress 
in the dynamics of society. The universe is sustained by a 
constant stress. or opposing strain— this is the doctrine of physics; 
so morality is sustained by a like tension or pressure. When- 
ever order exists, whether among atoms or molecules, or among 
the lower orders of living things, or among men, there is a 
balancing of opposing tendencies, and order is the result of 
compulsion. 

Section 88. — We do not, of course, positively know what the 
original condition of human beings was. That they were 
social in simple fashion is no doubt true. Little groups—- gens, 
clans, or households — appear soon to have sprung up and to 
have become closely united in a common interest. This was 
made necessary by the hostile attitude they were compelled to 
assume for self-preservation. Some of the beasts were much 
stronger than themselves and by nature better armed; while 
other groups with the idea uppermost of serving their own ends 
would not stop to weigh questions of right. Might and cun- 
ning were the available means of success, and success made 



Sec. Sp.] COURAGE AND LOYALTY. 1 49 

right. These primitive groups would very early develop the 
germs of moral qualities which would easily and naturally 
enough be advanced by primitive reflection to the requirements 
of primitive life. "Any animal whatever endowed with well- 
marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral sense 
or conscience as soon as its intellectual powers had become as 
well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in man." — (Dar- 
win, Descent of Man, Vol. I.). 

Section 89. — Courage and loyalty would be the first virtues 
to be universally honored, and cowardice and treachery the first 
crimes to be universally execrated. It is obvious enough why 
this should be so. If a group of hunters get into a dispute with 
another group for the possession of certain game, the group 
whose members should stand best by each other, would be most 
likely to get the prize. Any cowardice, any treachery would put 
in jeopardy not only the prize contended for, but the very lives 
of comrades. Precisely the like might befall in a contest with 
a ferocious beast The virtues of courage, of fealty to friends, 
would give the advantage to the group in general, and it would 
not only hold its own, but would gain strength by the successes 
of life, and exterminate, drive away, or swallow up such as were 
wanting in these virtues. The approval and praise of the brave 
and faithful and the condemnation of the cowardly and treach- 
erous would fix these moral impressions on the minds of the 
young, so that there would come at length to be no deviation 
from them under any circumstances, either in thought, feeling, 
or action. Hence, in battle death would be preferable to run- 
ning away. Prisoners would lose their lives, as they have often 
chosen to do, rather than betray their people. Those writers 
who find in such examples of heroism unanswerable proof of a 
mysterious moral instinct divinely implanted in the human heart, 
have taken only a superficial view of the genesis of this instinct. 
History shows how it was implanted and reinforced by. utilitarian 
methods. Among the Romans it was death for a soldier to 
desert his post or to lose his arms in battle. It was an 
8 



T50 CONFLICT IN MORALS. [Chap. XII, 

early custom to decimate commands which fled from the 
enemy. One out of every ten determined by lot had to 
die. Even in later times this penalty was sometimes in- 
flicted. The immediate advantages of cowardice were thus 
fatally cut off. The individual was submerged; it was the 
utter despotism of corporate opinion and corporate interest. 
Such moral and physical discipline had a psychological result in 
building up the heroic frame of mind in masses of men, who, 
in consequence, never quailed in the presence of danger. Cicero 
declares, " Whole legions of our troops have frequently marched 
with undaunted courage and even alacrity, to attacks, from which 
they were well persuaded not one of them could live to return." 
(And the Romans had an uninviting sort of life hereafter to 
look forward to). In Spain in the time of Sertorius, it was the 
custom when a chief fell, for his bodyguard to die with him. 
This was not unusual in early warlike times; it was the custom 
among our own ancestors. No stronger proof could be afforded 
of the high value which was attached to fealty of comrades in 
the midst of mortal combat. If any fell short of the requirement 
they were made to suffer moral and physical pain, so that the 
observance of the virtue was pressed by considerations which 
were mainly utilitarian. In the dilemma of two evils however 
selfishly viewed, that one was chosen which resulted in the less 
pain. Such feelings and actions descending from generation to 
generation became fixed in the mental constitution as a funda- 
mental element of it, so that in any particular emergency, it 
becomes unnecessary to weigh considerations in order to deter- 
mine conduct. It is no longer necessary to use conscious 
induction from experience to ascertain the principle of right 
action; the principle is at hand, and the actor carries it with him 
as a deductive truth which is applicable to every emergency. 
Savages whom we affect to despise illustrate this for us, when, as 
prisoners, they will not betray their comrades. Deep down in 
their instincts gentile or tribal fealty is recognized as the duty 
paramount to all others, and as a principle worthy to govern 
conduct, they carry it logically and loyally to death. They could 



Sec. QO.'] INTUITIVE MORALS. 151 

not give an account of its origin, and they could not philoso- 
phize about its use; it often seems adverse to the immediate 
interest of the individual, but it is so fixed in the mental consti- 
tution by the force of education and heredity, that the alterna- 
tive of disobedience comes not into consciousness. Thus were 
duty and obligation established in the human constitution long 
before men were able to philosophize, even falsely, about their 
origin. 

Section 90. — There is need that this view be made as 
emphatic as possible, it is so generally ignored. Our first wit- 
ness shall be Herbert Spencer, who has conceived the principle 
with clearness and presented it with force: "To make my posi- 
tion fully understood, it seems needful to add that, correspond- 
ing to the fundamental propositions of a developed moral sci- 
ence, there have been and still are, developing in the race, 
certain fundamental moral intuitions; and that, though these 
moral intuitions are the results of accumulated experiences of 
utility, gradually organized and inherited, they have come to be 
quite independent of conscious experience. Just in the same 
way that I believe the intuition of space, possessed by any living 
individual, to have arisen from organized and consolidated 
experiences of all antecedent individuals who bequeathed to him 
their slowly-developed nervous organizations — just as I believe 
that this intuition, requiring only to be made definite and com- 
plete by personal experiences, has practically become a form of 
thought, apparently quite independent of experience; so do I 
believe that the experiences of utility organized and consolidated 
through all past generations of the human race, have been pro- 
ducing corresponding nervous modifications, which by contin- 
ued transmission and accumulation, have become in us certain 
faculties of moral intuition — certain emotions corresponding to 
right and wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis in the 
individual experiences of utility." — (Letter to Mill, Data of Eth- 
ics, 123.) 

The following from G. H. Lewes, while less abstract than the 
preceding, brings out distinctively the conflict element which is 



152 CONFLICT IN MORALS. [Chap. XII 

concerned in the genesis of this "form of thought" in the sphere of 
morals: "We train our domestic animals as we train our children, 
to do this and avoid that, by expressions of approbation and 
disapprobation, which represent caresses and blows; and so far 
we find them impressible and educable by the moral instrumen- 
tality which, in its gradual action on man, has incorporated itself 
as custom, law, and public opinion. . . But in less endowed 
specimens of our race, even within the reach of culture, the 
response to the moral demands of society, whether in the shape 
of doctrine or of institutions, is little more than the conflict of 
opposing appetites, the check imposed by egoistic dread on egois- 
tic de'sire. It is a great progress beyond this brute dread of the 
stick when the love of approbation attains the ideal force which 
renders social rule or custom and the respect of fellow men an 
habitually felt restraint and guidance." — (Study of Psychology, 
145.) "And this observation leads us to the striking antithesis 
presented in the progress of mankind; namely, that the moral 
sense, which, in the first instance, was molded under the influ- 
ence of an external approbation and disapprobation, comes at 
last in the select members of a given generation, to incorporate 
itself as protest and resistance, as the renunciation of immedi- 
ate sympathy for the sake of a foreseen general good, as moral 
defiance of material force, and every form of martyrdom." — 
(146-7.) This doctrine of the formation of moral intuition 
through the discipline afforded by pleasure and pain in the 
experiences of life, appears to be distinctly recognized by Shaftes- 
bury in the following passage: "Yet the same master of the 
family using proper rewards and gentle punishments, rewards 
his children, teaches them goodness, and by this help instructs 
them in a virtue, which afterwards they practice upon other 
grounds, and without thinking of a penalty or bribe." — (Charac- 
teristics, II., 65.) 

Like every conception of value, this also has had its origin 
and development, and it has its history. Faint glimpses of it 
were seen by Aristotle and the Epicureans. Locke's association 
of ideas suggested the association of feeling, through which vir- 



Sec. <pi.\ VIRTUE FORMED BY SOCIAL INTEREST. 153 

tue on the basis of experience comes to be prized for its own 
sake rather than for what it secures. Hutcheson anticipated the 
doctrine, a clergyman, Gay, stated it distinctively, and Hartley 
more fully elaborated it. The account of its historical develop- 
ment from its germs to its maturity is given in his History of 
Morals by Lecky (Vol. I., 23-28), who calls it Hartley's Doctrine 
of Association. 

No principle more than the abnegation of self under motives 
of duty, has been used to point the divine mystery of the moral 
instincts. Yet, while this principle is so well exemplified in 
man, it finds apt illustration farther down the scale of intelligence. 
The pointer sometimes exemplifies habits of self restraint the 
first time he is taken afield. There is nothing mysteriously 
divine about this. It was born with him by inheritance from 
the mental habits formed in his ancestors by the pains and 
pleasures of experience. And so firmly are such habits set in 
the mind of the creature, whether animal or human, that they 
act by rule; and so rigid is the rule that it is often unconsciously 
carried over into exigencies where it does not properly belong. 
"General rules are often extended beyond the principle whence 
they first arise." — (Hume.) It is amazing that the rise and 
application of moral principles involving the abnegation of self 
and the heroism of virtue should be enveloped in a haze of mys- 
tery in order to divorce them from all considerations of utility 
and bring the only rational account of the moral instincts into 
discredit. 

Section 91. — Courage and loyalty are virtues esteemed at 
once for greater worth than they could have been as merely ego- 
istic virtues. A social virtue carries its authority by reinforce- 
ment through the plurality of interests over that of the individ- 
ual — though, indeed, there cannot be a personal virtue divorced 
from its social relations. 

When one man abandons his comrades in the last resort of a 
deadly feud, they may be overcome, and all may perish. The 
interests of the many outweigh the interests of the one; hence, 



154 CONFLICT IN MORALS. [Chap. XII. 

the odium of cowardice and treachery, and the glory of courage 
and loyalty. 

Then, in modern times and among the civilized, no character, 
no soldier. The success of an army depends on thorough dis- 
cipline. But what is discipline? Simply that direction of habit 
which establishes confidence between man and man. — (Darwin.) 
Discipline secures the loyalty of one to all, and of all to each, 
for the good of all. Hence, in the army in times of danger, 
every considerate man takes the side of authority, if at all rea- 
sonable in its exercise, whenever it is resisted, or even ques- 
tioned. The base character cannot be disciplined; he is not 
capable of entertaining the considerations, or of acquiring the 
habits which antagonize cowardice and treachery. The desper- 
adoes of our cities made the poorest soldiers in the late Union 
army. Control and discipline could not be made fully to over- 
come their native infirmities of character, and such were apt to 
desert their comrades in the hour of need. They had lost the 
better instincts of the savage who stands unswervingly by his com- 
rades in any peril. 

The courage which men get credit for in Valiant fight is a very 
compound quality of character. Wellington is reported to have 
said: "Give me an army of cowards." The intelligent man of 
character makes the best soldier, even though he frighten at 
first. Cromwell understood well enough that men having the 
most character made the best soldiers; his "ironsides" were 
yeomen in society and independent in religion. The execration 
of cowardice has no terrors for the characterless man; he fears 
bullets more than disgrace. He is out of balance, lacking 
offsetting qualities which sustain manliness. The man of char- 
acter has these, and fear he ever so, he does his duty. He may 
not think in detail of the cause at stake, of his comrades in 
arms, of his friends at home, of his own good name, of his fut- 
ure; but by all these is he influenced, and however strong the 
impulse to save himself by flight, he is not the dastard so to act. 
He stands to his post, and in so doing, chooses what by the 
common consent of mankind is the better part. Patriotism and 



Sec. p^.] THE CRIMES FIRST PUNISHED. 1 55 

the nerve it requires have become through inheritance an organ- 
ized part of manly being. The virtue of courage, all along 
esteemed the highest in man, has come through discipline in 
the direction of greatest need. And it matters not what the 
convictions about other things. A man may be manly contemn 
he ever so the dogmas. It is character makes the man, and 
depth and energy of conviction that makes the hero. And in 
these there is nothing factitious — they are formed and ingrained 
into the constitution by the trying experiences of life, till they 
become forms of thought and feeling ever present for the guid- 
ance of conduct. 

There is a passage in Tacitus which is suggestive in this con 
nection. Speaking of the ancient Germans he says : " Punish- 
ments are varied according to the nature of the crime. Traitors 
and deserters are hung upon trees; cowards, dastards, and those 
guilty of unnatural practices are suffocated in mud under a 
hurdle. This difference of punishment has in view the principle, 
that villainy should be exposed while it is punished, but turpi- 
tude concealed. The penalty annexed to slighter offences are 
also proportioned to the delinquency." (Note: — "Among these 
slighter offences, however, were reckoned homicide, adultery, 
theft, and many others of a similar kind.") — (Hist. 301-2.) 

Murder, theft, and adultery were considered slight offences 
compared with treachery, cowardice, and desertion; the former 
affected individuals mainly, the latter the common interest of 
the entire tribe. It is further a confirmation of our view, that 
the crimes of cowardice, treachery, and desertion are the first to 
be recognized and punished by law. These crimes by their 
disastrous results being the first to arrest the attention of society 
as such, are the first which society punishes in a regular way. 
" Instances abound of tribes among whom the only offences 
punishable by public authority are treason and its cognates, such 
as cowardice and desertion. Such was at one time the condition 
of the old German nations, and a similar paucity of recognized 
crimes is still discoverable among many of the Polynesian and 



156 CONFLICT IN MORALS. [Chap. XII. 

American Indian tribes, and is indeed quite characteristic of 
uncivilized races. On the other hand, probably no instance can 
be cited where public authority has been exercised in the pun- 
ishment of other offences prior to its employment against those 
of a treasonable nature." — (William W. Billson, Popular Science 
Monthly, February, 1880.) The Duke of Argyle recognizes the 
fact, that "courage and patriotism" "were perhaps the most 
esteemed virtues of antiquity," and " are indeed even conspic- 
uous in the savage and in the barbarian," without, however, per- 
ceiving its special significance. Man's greatest virtues, courage 
and fealty, grew out of utility under the din of conflict. 

It is a part of this confirmation of the views here stated, that 
the relative importance of crimes change&with change in the 
forms of society. Crimes regarded at one time as slight have 
come to assume a greater stain of criminality, while virtues 
which were once moral monopolies have come to be regarded 
of somewhat less comparative value. Homicide is no longer a 
slight crime ; and courage and fealty have less value than when 
the clan was in perpetual feuds with neighboring clans; they are 
less esteemed because they have less value. It is true that 
women and children and the country still need protection, but 
the urgency is much less than in former times, and the character 
of the protection required very much changed. The successful 
money-getter now disputes the palm with the successful soldier; 
and the merit of the former as a money-getter is becoming the 
most esteemed virtue of the times. Money enough will hide 
from view any amount of cowardice, moral or physical. Treason 
is still a capital offense because nations sustain attitudes toward 
each other of perpetual hostility, either latent or active; if they 
were all united into one, treason would pass from the category 
of crimes. 

Section 92. — Let us give a moment's attention to the origin 
of the most esteemed virtue of woman. If it be true that 
among primitive people there was no exclusiveness in the rela- 
tion of the sexes, there was no place for what is now known as 
female virtue. When communal marriage prevailed, the sexual 



Sec. 92.] THE SANCTIONS OF CHASTITY. 1 57 

instinct was no doubt very much weaker than at present. Each 
woman having a multiplicity of possible husbands, the prompt- 
ing of erethism would be certain to be met, and the succession of 
generations secured. The conception of chastity or self-control 
would only arise after women had become the possession of 
husbands either in polygamy or monogamy. The enterprising 
warrior who had secured a woman for himself from a hostile 
tribe, would probably refuse to share her with others (Lubbock); 
or after there came to be some property, and a man had paid 
for a wife with his own money, he would certainly regard her as 
his own exclusive possession (Morgan). And when the fashion 
became general cf getting wives by might, cunning, or purchase, 
from other tribes, a community of feeling would spring up 
guaranteeing these women to their captors by an exclusive 
tenure. Once this feeling of possession became established, 
such women as conformed to it by their sympathies and conduct 
would challenge a higher regard than those who failed in 
this respect. Man would prize most highly the exclusive 
women, and sexual control would become in his estimation the 
greatest of her virtues. This feeling would attain greater 
strength whenever the support of children fell entirely on the 
father by the establishment of the family, since he would then 
have a practical reason for wishing assurance in the matter of 
paternity. When it became understood that men prized women 
most for this quality, it would become at once the interest of 
every individual woman so to conduct herself as to maintain her 
reputation for chastity. Any failure in this direction would 
bring to her the most terrible of. penalties, — the scorn of her 
peers and the forfeiture of the sympathy of both sexes. As the 
rival of other women for a husband, as their rival for consider- 
ations of respect in society, everything would be lost by a mis- 
step. Whatever of evil may attend on virtue under the exclu- 
siveness of monogamy in which many must remain unmarried 
or ill-married, the rigid practice of virtue still subserves the best 
interests of the sex; and the failure to practice it is attended 
with crushing penalties. 



158 CONFLICT IN MORALS. \Chap. XI L 

Spartan laws and customs were not exacting of female virtue, 
because there was no family-life proper in Spartan society. It 
was different in the earlier periods of the Roman common- 
wealth. Among the Jews the penalty for adultery was severe; 
and the ordeal through which a woman, merely suspected and 
accused by her husband, must pass, was hardly less than brutal. 
Among our Saxon ancestors the women inflicted the punish- 
ment for violation of the laws of chastity. The offender was 
compelled to hang herself, or she was driven through the village 
and lacerated with rods and knives till she died. The mode of 
punishment in modern times is changed, but women still assume 
the chief responsibility of inflicting it. Everywhere the unchaste 
according to the accepted standard are overcome in the ordeal 
through which they are compelled to pass, and by common in- 
stinct, the life of conventional virtue is accepted by women as 
movement in the direction of least resistance. And here, too, 
as in regard to courage, the sentiment of virtue is a result of the 
organization of race-experiences involving pleasure and pain, 
and has become a "form of thought," apparently simple in 
structure and absolute in authority for the direction of conduct. 

Section 93.— -Without the moral quality of respecting the 
rights of property, a civilized community could not exist, but in 
primitive communities where everything is common, there is no 
place for such moral quality, and it is not known. In some 
conditions of society stealing is honorable, and one tribe steals 
from another. In this state of society, war is the rule and peace 
the exception. Unless there is a formal alliance, actual war is 
taken for granted, consequently, whatever a tribe steals is clear 
gain, hence general approval and the honorable character of 
theft. Even in modern warfare, under the suspension of civil 
law, stealing becomes an honorable craft; and in the mess, the 
most adroit thief is the most consequential member of it. His 
skill redounds to the benefit of his comrades, and they approve 
accordingly. In civil life theft violates a right which all should 
enjoy without disturbance, and its general prevalence would 
unsettle the basis of society itself; and it is condemned as 



Sec. p4-\ THE RIGHTS OF POSSESSION. 1 59 

immoral. In primitive times, as soon as an individual acquired 
property in anything as the product of his own care, labor, or 
enterprise, he would resent the attempt of another to take it 
from him. If the theft or robbery should be actually accom- 
plished by an equal within his reach, he certainly would retaliate. 
Stealing could only be practiced at a certain cost. 

In controverting Helvetius' view of the conventional nature of 
morality, Diderot states the following case to illustrate the 
primitive moral conscience : "Qu'un sauvage monte a un arbre 
pour cueillir des fruits, et qu'un autre sauvage survienne pour 
s'emparer de ses fruits, celui-ci ne s'enfuira-t-il pas avec son 
vol? II me semble que, par sa fuite, il decelera la conscience de 
son injustice et qu'il s'avouera punissable ; il me semble que le 
spolie s'indignera, poursuivra le voleur, et aura conscience de 
l'injure qu'on lui aura faite." — (Quoted by Paul Janet, Nineteenth 
Century, April, 1881). This does not so much illustrate the 
consciousness of property-rights already formed, as the manner 
in which it is formed. The savage would flee to secure his booty 
without a fight; and he would flee equally, if he thought he was 
taking the fruit by divine command for a holy purpose. But the 
uniform effort to inflict pain for theft would establish a condition 
necessary to be taken into account whenever theft was thought 
of; and when reflection and sympathy had become sufficiently 
developed as the basis of the mental power to put one's self in 
another's place, the sense of duty or conscience in relation to 
property would appear to follow as a legitimate result. The 
instinct of possession would become established by the acquisi- 
tion and defense of property. The value of respect for the right 
of ownership would commend itself to society as a measure of 
peace against lawless contention, and laws would be made for the 
protection of property with adequate penalties. The prevailing 
observance of the rights of possession whenever the existence of 
property becomes general, is simply action under pressure taking 
the direction of least resistance. 

Section 94. — Then, what is morality from this point of view? 
It is threading the way of life among antagonistic forces, and 



l6o CONFLICT IN MORALS. {Chap. XII. 

taking such direction as meets with the fewest damaging blows. 
It is precisely that course which secures the greatest balance of 
happiness in a whole lifetime. Morality is the aggregate result 
of utilitarian adjustment in the midst of complicated conflict; 
and that is precisely the reason why "honesty is the best policy," 
and altruism superior to hedonism. Thus the exalted sense of 
obligation and duty grew up naturally and without mystery out 
of corporate or common feelings and interests of allied groups 
or peoples, to be extended and perfected as the social and 
political aggregates enlarged with the progress of society. And 
herein appears the qualifying fact necessary to be taken into 
consideration, that, morality is not an exclusively individual, but 
a social thing affecting the individual as one member among 
many which constitute society; and that, therefore, our causal 
definition has reference to the aggregate experience of individuals 
in society, and not to exceptional instances of individual experi- 
ence. And we must again reiterate that the moral instincts are 
not, built up by the experience of the individual merely, but by 
this superadded to the accumulated experiences of ancestors. 
And thus morality "has its more secure foundations in the hard 
won experience of mankind." — (Maudsley). 

Section 95. — Religion like morality had its origin in utility 
pure and simple. Religion was the discharge of some good 
office to a superior being for the benefits which that being could 
confer, or to prevent the injuries which that being could inflict. 
The rites were performed more generally to escape from the 
evils to which primitive life is so greatly exposed. While moral 
constraint originated in similar experiences of utility, it is a social 
virtue even more than religious devotion; but while morality 
forbid actions which injured the family or tribe and approved 
those which resulted in the general good, so religion enjoined 
those duties to the gods which would induce them to do good 
or refrain from doing harm to the family or tribe. Both pro- 
posed precisely the same end by different means, and this iden- 
tity very obviously served to unite them closely together in the 
habits and feelings of early peoples. They were born of the 



Sec. pS-] QUESTIONABLE SHAPES OF VIRTUE. l6l 

same mother, possibly twins. And then when a class became 
differentiated as priests to officiate in religion for the good of 
the people, it was natural they should assume a supervision of 
morals as well, in behalf of the same good. Hence, from asso- 
ciation, the two came to be regarded as inseparably bound up 
together in one, and as divine in means as well as in origin and 
aim. No doubt the religious feeling has done much to strengthen 
the authority of morals, but very little to give them shape for 
the best practical efficiency. While it has strengthened the 
good, it has only too often been ready, through the perversions 
of fancy and interest acting upon ignorance, equally to strengthen 
the evil. Morals are modified by circumstances, and are differ- 
ent in different countries and among different peoples. And 
very often religion has sanctioned at one place or time what 
both religion and morals condemned at another. But while 
different forms of society have different codes of morality, that 
code always comes into vogue which confers, or is supposed to 
confer, benefits on the dominant class or classes in society. 
Even when certain moral and religious usages are detrimental 
on one side, they are very certain to secure reputed advantages 
on a different side. Even suttee, human sacrifice, and religious 
orgies only justify the statement in part that through ignorance 
and bad reasoning, "the strangest customs and superstitions, in 
complete opposition to the true welfare and happiness of man- 
kind, have become all-powerful throughout the world." Take 
an extreme example : Getting rid of the aged and of female 
infants is attended no doubt with certain advantages to the 
savages who practice these enormities ; that is, the custom saves 
exertion, and there is less danger of the vigorous starving to 
death. Among some rude peoples, a young man must take off 
somebody's head before he can marry. This is a very savage 
and immoral state of things; yet it is not without its reason for 
being. Where this is the case, every tribe regards every other 
tribe as its natural enemy, and the ability to take the life of an 
enemy is the most useful to comrades that it is possible to dis- 
play; hence its moral approval as the very crown of manhood. 



1 62 CONFLICT IN MORALS. \Chap. XII. 

But if turned against comrades, killing is then condemned as 
murder. Again, at one period in the progress of every advanced 
race "blood revenge" was the law. When any one was killed, 
his relatives must kill the slayer if possible, and if not possible, 
why then they must kill some one of his kindred. This was 
held to be one of the most sacred and urgent of duties. With 
us it would be very immoral; with them it was the hight of 
morality, and not without reason. In those times of violence 
there was no state with adequate jurisdiction to try criminals 
and punish them; yet by some process must murder be avenged 
to keep it within bounds, or the lives of none would be safe. 
This was effected in simple fashion on obvious grounds of prim- 
itive jurisdiction by exacting blood for blood and by holding 
relatives responsible for the guilt of the criminal. This best 
subserved under the circumstances the moral interests of society. 
Comparative history is rich in such examples from the various 
departments of life. 

What is considered chastity under one form of social organi- 
zation and abides for ages, is not chastity under a different form, 
and could not be endured. Caste observances are absurd 
enough, but they have no doubt served a useful end in the 
maintenance of order. Class distinctions in the best forms of 
society known, however apparently vicious, come no doubt with 
a full measure of gratification to those who are at pains to keep 
them up. Etiquette, which is often arbitrary and too often 
made subservient to uncultured assumption, has its justification, 
nevertheless, in the need of protection for cultured sensibility. 
Mrs. Grundy's social standard and moral laws are not always 
the highest; indeed, they never are. They are a sort of average 
which it is best for average people strictly to observe. Though 
some of the fashions, like some of the morals and superstitions, 
appear to be in complete opposition to the greater welfare and 
happiness of mankind, they nevertheless yield a measure of sur- 
plus gratification which is the very warrant of their existence. 
The moral codes that fit must not be morally stilted. 

There are people who sometimes rise above the prevailing 



Sec. pj.] MORAL SURVIVALS. 1 63 

moral standard; but the arbiters of reputation will taboo 
them as contemptuously as if they had fallen below it (Mill). 
Hence, to rise above Mrs. Grundy's plane is to incur her dis- 
pleasure and meet with her severest rebukes. One can only 
voluntarily incur this who has something of the moral hero in 
him. As an offset to the unpleasantness he thus meets, he 
must find consolation in his own consciousness of honest motive 
and earnest work, with the hope of justification some day. 
Even his course beset as it may be with opposition and danger 
has to him a balance of pleasure which determines his action. 
He would feel the unhappiness of conformity to be greater than 
that of non-conformity. So that moral heroism, even in the act 
of stemming the current, paradoxical as it may seem, is in itself 
motion in the direction of least resistance. The railroad engi- 
neer who voluntarily rides to death in the line of duty nobly 
illustrates this principle. "Ich kann nicht anders," exclaimed 
Luther at Worms. He was going the only road it was possible 
for a great soul to go. Such road precisely the martyrs have 
made holy. 

Wrong actions sanctioned by the moral sense, are very often 
survivals of what was once the best possible, but is so no longer, 
owing to changed conditions. An example may be given. In 
feudal times private war was regarded as a sacred right, and just 
as moral as we now think national war. But when political 
unitization had given the State sufficient power to deal with all 
dangerous disputes between subjects, private war became 
unnecessary and immoral. Still it was tenacious of life, and 
from habit survived the conditions under which it sprung up; 
and it was only put an end to after a struggle with the superior 
powers of the State. Sacrificing to the dead was, among the 
ancestors of the Romans, a pious filial duty, but out of it grew 
that anomaly of history, the Roman circus; which with amplified 
iniquity and outrage, lived on through the most exalted 
period of Roman civilization. There is scarcely a society on 
earth that is not full of customs, rites, and observances which 
have survived the circumstances which gave them birth; and 



164 CONFLICT IN MORALS. \Chap. XII 

while some of them are perfectly innocent and pleasure-giving, 
others are waking up a feeling of incongruity which will eventu- 
ally put an end to them. 

It is to be observed that to a considerable extent, it is not so 
much what really is beneficial as what is believed to be bene- 
ficial that becomes established as a rite or custom; and this has 
been far more prevalent in religion than in morals. The sancti- 
fication of immorality has been largely due to misinterpretation 
of the order of nature and the misconception of the means to 
good. When the Ghonds sacrifice one of their number, tearing 
the victim to pieces a bit at a time, and prolonging the torture 
as much as possible, they commit an immoral act, though at the 
same time a religious one; but they do it in full sincerity and 
faith that it is necessary to make the seasons propitious. Man- 
kind have largely worked to the pattern of a utilitarian world of 
their own in faith, which is often sadly at variance with the real 
world as discerned by a higher degree of intelligence. 

Section 96. — If the warrant for morality here indicated be 
true, then is it not factitious and arbitrary, but largely founded 
in the nature and relation of things, and brought into practical 
and systematic form through the experiences of life, feeling for 
the path of least pain. This may sometimes be thwarted under 
the divergent interests of classes, the misconception of the 
means to good, and the incongruities of survival, and evil spring 
up under the sanctions of morality and religion; but it is still 
true in a general way, that the great moral virtues have their 
basis in the conditions and needs of the society which enforces 
them. 

A writer in the North American Review, who jokes in the 
interest of reaction, has this jeu d esprit concerning morality : 
"A new and relaxed edition of the commandments must be pro- 
vided and published, — no, not of the commandments, for there is 
no one to command them, but of the invitations, which must all 
(fewer than ten will serve) appear in gay dress, and with smiles 
on their faces to attract young men and maidens. I am not 
competent to draw out this law; our leaders must do it." He 



Sec. 96.] THE SANCTIONS OF VIRTUE. 1 65 

then proceeds in the same cruel vein to point out a few of its 
governing principles. He quite mistakes the character of the 
views he ridicules; and the wit misses its aim, shooting under. 
He conceives that a system of morality can have no authority 
unless there is a being of terror to command it. He is in that 
phase of survival which regards the moral government of the 
world as not by regular sequence in the established constitution 
of things, but by anthropomorphic supervision under a system 
of arbitrary law. But the anthropomorphism is not necessary; 
without it the law does command: This shalt thou do and that 
shalt thou not do; and it commands with adequate sanctions as 
the transgressor very well knows. "All nature breathes the 
spirit of authority, and is full of the exercise of command. 
'Thou shalt,' or 'Thou shalt not,' are words continually on her 
lips, and all her injunctions and all her prohibitions are backed 
by the most tremendous sanctions." — (Duke of Argyll, Con. 
Rev., Feb., 18S1). 

If this be correct — and it is — then the following is not true : 
"Vice can be enjoyed in common just as well as virtue; nor if 
wisely regulated will it exhaust the tastes that it appeals to. 
Regulated with equal skill, and with equal far-sightedness, it will 
take its place side by side with virtue; nor will sociology or 
social morality give us any reason for preferring the one to the 
other."— (W. H. Mallock. Is Life Worth Living? Chap. III.) 

When an author issues a bull like this, he ought to give relief 
to the tension of the reader's mind by instancing some familiar 
examples. Still we may be able to gather enough from the con- 
text to identify the author's position. The moral and religious 
authorities assume to decree what vice is and what virtue is. 
These authorities sometimes pronounce a certain course of 
action as vice because it is offensive to them, and they wish to ren- 
der it obnoxious. Such course of action thus condemned as vice 
may be in itself apparently natural and right, and to other classes 
in community with other views, particularly desirable. But this 
very fact renders it a greater vice according to Mr. Mallock and 
his clients. Thus free inquiry on certain subjects is a vice, which 



1 66 CONFLICT IN MORALS. [Chap. XII. 

authorities recognized as such by millions of human beings have 
moved heaven and earth to put down; and yet people may 
practice this " vice," and greatly enjoy it for a whole lifetime. 
In like manner, and by the same authorities, the secular education 
of children is the head vice of all, and yet whole nations take 
pleasure in it, and persist in keeping it up, greatly to the annoy- 
ance of the chief priests in all the hierarchies. There is no 
limit, indeed, to the social enjoyment of such factitious vices) 
and this very fact should make it suspicious that their character 
is factitious and not real. The idea in the above quotation, of 
regulating the practice of vice with equal far-sightedness as the 
practice of virtue, is grotesque enough. Such a notion over- 
looks the fundamental difference between vice and virtue, since 
far-sightedness condemns the practice of the one, and commends 
the practice of the other; and in so overlooking this distinction, 
confounds vice with virtue. If a course of action is warranted 
by the constitution of nature, of the human mind, and of 
society, as that which is attended on the whole with the greater 
balance of happiness, it is not a vice, however lustily it may be 
denounced as such even by well-meaning people, and its enjoy- 
ment in common affords no ground for paradox. That a virtue 
may be attended with immediate sacrifice is no proof that, in 
the end, it may not make for happiness in the largest measure 
possible. A real vice is a very different thing. What is at 
variance with the fundamental laws and relations of society can- 
not be practiced in common without disagreeable consequences; 
and it cannot be regulated with far-sightedness in the interest of 
happiness ; if it could be, morality would have no valid sanc- 
tions, and no particular use except to maintain the consequence 
of certain orders in society. 

The notions of reactionists often go not only to ignore but 
actually to undermine the basis of morals, first by denying the 
only real sanctions of morality, and secondly, by approving what 
should be condemned, and condemning what should be ap- 
proved. This we think is clearly to be seen in Mr. Mallock's 
desperate struggle with modern thought. The new ideas are a 



Sec. g6.*\ the school of reaction. 167 

horde of barbarians which have been let loose upon us! A 
certain course of action apparently part of inevitable and irre- 
sistible tendency, and quite generally thought well of, is to be 
condemned and cast out because, forsooth, it is not in accord- 
ance with the mediaeval spirit ! Indeed, life itself is not worth 
living unless it is what it was conceived to be in mediaeval times! 
Moreover, things are not to be explained, since this can only be 
done by first rendering them not worth explaining! Hence, life 
is only to be regarded as worthful so far as it is invested with 
the glamour of delusion ! The author hopes that faith will yet 
succeed and conquer sight. That is, that delusion shall over- 
ride common-sense, and survival reign instead of progress. So, 
to be happy, we must trustfully and lovingly fall into the lap of 
the Mother Church ! Such is the outcome of discussing moral 
questions under the coloring of traditional bias uncorrected by 
the light which history and the comparative method afford. 

It is the spoiled child over again. If he is not permitted to 
have all the sweetmeats he wants to disorder his stomach and 
make him testy and exacting, he forthwith decides that life is 
not worth living, and may be, he threatens to make away with 
himself. If Mr. Mallock's school cannot retain around life the 
glamour and delusion with which primitive views of nature and 
of life have invested it, it is, forsooth, not worth living, and they 
become rank pessimists, teaching that life is degradation. 
According to the good old stoics nothing is evil which is in 
accordance with nature; according to Mallock there is little but 
evil in nature, and everything is good which is in accordance 
with the dogmas of the church. Of course it disturbs equanim- 
ity of feeling to have the dogmas shattered and overthrown 
which have all along been trusted so implicitly and loved so 
well; but the human mind has a wonderful facility of adaptation, 
and when the spoiled children get over their tantrum, they will 
be surprised to find how well they feel; and threatened rebellion 
and malevolence will react into a cheerful acceptance of the 
inevitable situation. 



1 68 CONFLICT IN morals. [Chap. XII. 

Note. —I am well aware that a chapter like this is liable to be misconstrued 
by moralists whose vague theories scrape the skies, and whose moral sanctions 
are so invested with mystery and awe as only to be named with bated breath. 
Many qualifications and explanations would be needed to fence it round about 
for protection against misapprehension and adverse criticism, but they cannot 
be made here. I am furthermore quite conscious that this statement of the ori- 
gin and sanctions of morality has none of that sanctimonious air so much the 
fashion, and which is so potent to make amends for any amount of common- 
place and dullness on this subject. I believe it to be a question of science and 
history which should be treated of in the secular spirit. If the view herein 
taken should fully account for every form of good there is in moral systems, 
showing in a general way how, and the reason why, it came into existence, it 
may afford to dispense with the "goody" style of treatment. 



PART THIRD. 

HISTORICAL BREVITIES ILLUSTRATING CONFLICT. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

GENERAL HISTORY. 

Section 97. — The most obvious and striking fact in general 
history is the conflict of nations and peoples in their migrations 
and wars. The great body of history is made up of the records 
of these transactions — bare records with little to enlighten us 
concerning the indirect but most important results of such con- 
flicts. There were actors enough to struggle for selfish ends, 
but few philosophers to divine remoter consequences. Certain 
it is that these conflicts have been a huge factor in shaping his- 
tory, and in making society what it is, — and also, through the 
discipline of the individual both directly and under the reaction 
of society, in moulding him into new and diversified psycholog- 
ical forms. The relation of cause and effect by which these 
indirect results come about, is usually so obscure and so little 
related to the obvious motives of the conflicts, as quite entirely 
to escape the observation of contemporaries and of those who 
lived near the time of the events. It is only by accumulating 
through the centuries, and into times of systematic inquiry under 
the stimulus of a more rational culture, that rigid methods may 
direct historical investigations, and bring to light the more 
recondite results of historical movement. Our concern here has 
to do only with the manifold forms of conflict among and within 
peoples and nations. 



170 GENERAL HISTORY. [C/lOp. XIII. 

Section 98. — The State has all along been maintained on the 
exigencies of conflict; and it is quite impossible to conceive 
how without the disposition of aggression and the necessity of 
defense, political organization could ever have taken form. The 
little knot of kindred which we must regard as the original germ 
of State organization constituted a little band offensive and 
defensive on general war principles. It was bound to get all it 
could to the full satisfaction of its wants; and through mutual 
aggression there would be frequent collision between family 
groups whose members must then stand by one another for self- 
preservation. In consequence of this same need of defense and 
desire of aggression, were these social units enlarged by aggrega- 
tion through leagues and conquests. This is but a modified 
form of the view taken of the origin of the state by Hobbes and 
Spinoza. Modern research has discovered that the original unit 
of the larger aggregations of mankind, was a group of kindred by 
birth or adoption, called the household, clan, or gens. Whence 
came this original unit? Why did it ever form at all in a union 
so firmly knit together ? 

In accounting for union and sociality among mankind, specu- 
lation seems to have given preference to the feebleness and long 
duration of infancy. Shaftesbury asks: " Does not this defect 
engage him [man] the more strongly to society, and force him 
to own that he is purposely, and not by accident, made rational 
and sociable, and can no otherwise increase or subsist than in 
that social intercourse and community which is his natural 
state?" He deduces every form of the social affections in man 
from this feebleness of infancy: " conjugal affection, and natural 
affection to parents, duty to magistrates, love of a common city, 
community, or country, with the other duties and social parts of 
life." — (Characteristics, II., 309.) Condorcet regards the consti- 
tution of the family as natural : " Formee d'abord par le besoin 
que les enfants ont de leurs parents, par les tendresse des meres, 
par cclle des peres, quoique moins generale et moins vive; la 
longue duree de ce besoin des enfants a du donner le temps de 
naitre et de se developper a un sentiment propre a inspirer le 



Sec. pS.] INFANCY AND DANGER AS BONDS. 171 

desir perpetuer cette reunion. Cette meme duree a suffi pour 
en faire sentir les advantages." — (CEuvres VI, 25-6.) The 
influence of prolonged infancy in establishing the primitive 
family and in developing sociality among mankind has been 
brought into prominence under the light of modern research 
by Mr. Fiske in his chapter on the Genesis of Man morally, 
Cosmic Philosophy. While there is no doubt much weight 
in these views, it may well be doubted whether there is not 
still something else required to impart to the feebleness and 
duration of infancy their efficacy in building up the social ele- 
ment in man. It is true that the habit of remaining together 
from necessity, would generate the desire to remain together 
after the occasion for union had passed ; but the intervention of 
some counter necessity would very readily overcome the former 
after its direct force had been spent. We have seen in the pre- 
ceding chapter that the social instincts of animals appear to 
have been largely determined by the necessary conditions of 
sustenance. Those which succeed best by living together 
become gregarious ; those which succeed best by living alone 
become solitary. 

The needs of infancy are not so great among primitive peo- 
ples as among ourselves, and we should be careful not to over- 
estimate them. But among civilized peoples, with the greater 
weakness of infancy, and the greater development which the 
social instincts have received from ages of discipline, we see 
how readily kindred separate, going to all points of the compass 
in the wide world. Then what bound the primitive group 
together? The necessity of union for mutual protection in a 
state of universal war. Now, the family readily separates under 
the mere impulse of "getting on in the world," because the 
overpowering State affords protection; then, kindred clung 
together because they must for mutual preservation. If man- 
kind from the first till now could have existed better in isolation, 
or in single isolated families, than in an associated capacity, 
they would have remained forever isolated without further 
social instincts, like the lion and eagle. But the savage, with 



172 GENERAL HISTORY. \Chdp. XIII. 

solitary habits, if accessible, would have stood little chance of 
survival, being liable to be cut off by enemies, brute or human, 
who would unite for that purpose. The compulsion of uniting 
in bands would establish the habit and feeling of fellowship and 
necessitate incipient organization. Owing to conditions of per- 
petual warfare, the isolated monogamic family as we know it, 
could not have existed as the unit of a sparse population, and 
the relation of the sexes assumed a mutually plural character in 
the organization of the gens and tribe. It was union in large 
families (gentes or clans) and groups of such families (tribes) for 
safety; and the social and organizing instincts were thus exer- 
cised and strengthened from age to age by the exigencies of life 
through combination for success in the ever-present struggle of 
existence; and thus it has come about that the social instincts 
are stronger in civilized than in savage peoples. 

When progress had carried portions of mankind Jnto the agri- 
cultural stage of society, and there was some exchange of prod- 
ucts with division of labor, cities sprang up — walled cities almost 
invariably. The increased wealth could only be protected from 
general plunder in densely populated places; and the cities were 
only safe with walls around them. Cicero observes: "For 
though men are by nature sociable creatures, yet it was the 
design of preserving what they had that first put them on build- 
ing of cities of refuge." But this very thing made them more 
sociable. People united to defend their own, and also to get 
what belonged to enemies (strangers); and so the social ties were 
strengthened by both the processes of attacking and defending. 
This process had long been going on and the germ of the walled 
city appeared very early. The "stockaded village" was the 
form which fortification assumed at an early period of tribal 
existence, when it was life rather than property that needed pro- 
tection. Later appeared the "joint tenement house of adobe 
bricks and of stone, in the nature of fortresses." Still later, in 
the last stage of barbarism, under some increase of wealth, arose 
"cities surrounded with ring embankments, and finally with, 
walls of dressed stone." — (Morgan, Ancient Society, 257, 533). 



Sec. (?8.] EARLY COMBINATION FOR DEFENSE. 1 73 

The last was but a more advanced form for similar ends, of what 
had existed for ages and ages before. Contemplate the develop- 
ment of society as we may, we cannot fail to perceive that con- 
flict has been the chief factor in determining its form. We 
must regard the social or gregarious elements of character as 
derivative, as formed by education under the stern experiences 
of life. We can understand that when two groups of hungry 
savages meet over a slain stag, the original impulse of individual 
preservation would excite them to combat, and thus contribute 
to the development of pugnacity. We can further understand 
how this need of contest leads to combination, and that out of 
habitual combination for success and safety the social instincts 
and capacities have mainly sprung. 

Dr. Bernard de Mandeville, an original but somewhat perverse 
writer, early in the eighteenth century, very well stated this view 
of the origin of society. In a general way he finds the origin 
of sociableness in the "multiplicity of man's desires and the oppo- 
sition he meets with in his endeavors to gratify them." He 
teaches that if mankind had been simple in their virtues with 
few wants, they could never have "raised themselves into such 
large societies as there have been in the world." — (Fable of the 
Bees, 220). "The first thing that could make men associate 
would be common danger, which unites the greatest enemies: 
this danger they would certainly be in, from wild beasts, con- 
sidering that no uninhabited country is without them, and the 
defenceless condition in which men come into the world." — 
{425). The author amplifies on this feature of social evolution; 
and in speaking of savages repelling wild beasts, he assigns to 
man the gradual improvement of his weapons very much as an 
archaeologist would do now-a-days. In one of his dialogues, he 
makes Horatio repeat that the first step toward society was the 
necessity men were in of assisting one another against savage 
beasts. Cleomenes then adds: "The second step to society is 
the danger men are in from one another; for which we are 
beholden to that stanch principle of pride and ambition, that 
all men are born with. Different families may endeavor to live 
9 



1 74 GENERAL HISTORY. [Chap. XIII. 

together, and be ready to join in common danger; but they are 
of little use to one another when there is no common enemy to 
oppose. If we consider that strength, agility, and courage 
would, in such a state, be the most valuable qualifications, and 
that many families could not live long together, but some, actuated 
by the principle I named, would strive for superiority: this 
would breed quarrels, in which the most weak and fearful, for 
their own safety, always join with him of whom they have the 
best opinion." Whereupon Horatio suggests that, "this would 
naturally divide multitudes into bands and companies, and of 
which the strongest and most valiant would always swallow up 
the weakest and most fearful." Cleomenes declares that this is 
precisely the state of things we find. "The third and last step 
to society is the invention of letters." But this is peaceful, and 
it is quoted to show that the author was not riding any war 
hobby. 

These views of Mandeville have been confirmed by the latest 
and most thorough researches. Lewis H. Morgan, in Ancient 
Society (T22), says: "A tendency to confederate for mutual 
defense would very naturally exist among kindred and contigu- 
ous tribes. When the advantages of a union had been appre- 
ciated by actual experience the organization, at first a league, 
would gradually cement into a federal unity. The state of per- 
petual warfare in which they lived would quicken this natural 
tendency into action among such tribes as were sufficiently 
advanced in intelligence and in the arts of life to perceive its 
benefits. It would be simply a growth from a lower into a 
higher organization by an extension of the principle which united 
the gentes in a tribe." 

Herbert Spencer, in his chapters on the Development of 
Political Institutions, in course of publication in the Popular 
Science Monthly (1881), brings out very clearly the part which 
primitive hostility and national conflict have played in uniting 
men in political bodies. "For we see here that in the struggle 
for existence among societies, the survival of the fittest is the 
survival of those in which the power of military co-operation is 



Sec. pp.] HOW POLITICAL UNION BEGINS. 175 

the greatest, and military co-operation is that primary kind of 
co-operation which prepares the way for other kinds of co-opera- 
tion. So that the formation of larger societies by the union of 
smaller ones in war, and this destruction or absorption of the 
smaller ununited societies by the united larger ones, is an inevit- 
able process through which the varieties of men most adapted 
for social life supplant the less adapted varieties." — (Popular 
Science Monthly, January, 1881). 

The manner in which this comes about is well stated by 
Tylor, Anthropology (432-3): "The effects of war in consoli- 
dating a loosely formed society are described by travelers who 
have seen a barbaric tribe prepare to invade an enemy or defend 
their own borders. Provisions and property are brought into 
the common stock; the warriors submit their unruly wills to a 
leader, and private quarrels are sunk in a laiger patriotism. Dis- 
tant clans of kinsfolk come together against the common enemy, 
and neighboring tribes with no such natural union make an 
alliance, their chiefs serving under the orders of a leader chosen 
by them all. Here are seen in their simplest forms two of the 
greatest facts in history, — the organized army, where the several 
forces are led by their own captains under a general, and the 
confederation of tribes, such as in higher civilization brings on 
political federations of states like those in Greece and Switzer- 
land. Out of such alliances of tribes, when they last beyond 
the campaign, there arise nations, where often, as in old Mex- 
ico, the head of the strongest tribe will become king." 

Section 99. — Nothing better exemplifies the firm bonds 
which held rude peoples together in the midst of conflict, than 
the rigid unwritten code, under which fealty to chiefs and to 
one another was exacted. Of the ancient Germans Tacitus 
says: "In the field of battle, it is disgraceful for the chief to be 
surpassed in valor; it is disgraceful for the companions not 
to equal their chief; but it is reproach and infamy during a 
whole succeeding life to retreat from the field surviving him." 
The battle of Maldon was fought A. D. 991 between the invad- 



176 GENERAL HISTORY. [C/iaJf. XIII. 

ing Northmen and the East Saxons under their Ealdorman, 
Brightnoth, who was killed : 

' ' Rath was in battle 
Offa hewn down. 
Yet had he furthered 
That his lord had pledged, 
As he ere agreed 
With his ring-giver 
That they should both 
To the borough ride 
Hale to home, 
Or in the host cringe 
On the slaughter place 
Of their wounds die, 
" He lain thane-like 
His lord hard by." 
— Growth of the English Constitution, Freeman, 44. 

But we need not go back this far to find examples showing 
how conflict has developed the social instincts which bind man- 
kind together. In comparatively modern times the Scotch 
Highlanders present a striking example of the kind. The feuds 
between clans and their contests with the Lowlanders rendered 
their life above all things warlike. Acts of mutual helpfulness 
which this made necessary, the sense of common peril which 
could only be averted by combined effort through fealty to their 
chief and to one another, formed a character remarkable for 
fraternal devotion. They hesitated not to meet certain death, 
hundreds of them one after another, rather than betray comrade 
or chief. " Chivalrous, self-sacrificing fidelity was the great 
virtue of the Highlanders, and the education of the clan-life 
made it at last a distinguishing feature of the Scotch character." 
— (Lecky). 

The irrepressible nature of the sentiment of patriotism, in 
consequence of which unappeasable discontent follows the extinc- 
tion of nationality by conquest, has its origin in this same source, 
the brotherhood of conflict descending with its loved traditions 
from generation to generation, until it has become a fixed constit- 
uent of the character of the people. Even in the latest times, 
hardly anything so establishes the bond of friendship across all 



Sec. 100.] WAR MADE US A NATION. 177 

lines, as to have stood together in the perils of battle, marched 
in the same columns, bivouackedon the same fields,slept under 
the same blankets, and "drank from the same canteen." Said 
General McClellan in his farewell address to the army, "Nothing 
is more binding than the friendship of companions in arms." 

The history of our country illustrates the part which conflict 
plays as the motive of political confederation. In 1643 the first 
union of the kind was formed between four New England 
colonies for protection against the Indians ; and most of the 
counts in the agreement had reference to this object. The 
Indian tribes were themselves united in leagues and more formid- 
able in consequence. The danger was great enough to unite 
these four colonies, but not great enough to overcome the repug- 
nance of Massachusetts for Rhode Island, and the latter was left 
out of the compact. In 1754 another confederation was pro- 
jected between a larger number of colonies with the same objects 
in view, being apprehensive of trouble with the French and Indi- 
ans. These tentative efforts were followed by still greater in the 
same direction when the Revolution broke out. "It is not 
enough for a people to form political unions by getting constitu- 
tions made to order, and by copying approved models; there 
must be something for national feeling and a sense of unity to 
rest upon. The revolutionary war created a common history, of 
wnich no state need be ashamed, and prepared the way for union, 
not merely by the necessities of the times but by exertions and 
sufferings in a common cause; and the feeling of unity thus en- 
kindled could overcome, for the time at least, all causes of divis- 
ion. Hence, in more ways than one, the war made us a nation." 
— (Woolsey, Political Science, II., 242). 

Section 100. — The different branches of political organiza- 
tion, as we now find them, are severally and jointly the developed 
product of early conflict through long periods of evolution. The 
little primitive group or gens which constituted the unit of tribal 
organization had its chief — in times of danger it must have its 
chief, even though he lay down his authority when the danger 
has passed And when this original gens became a tribe, there 



173 GENERAL HISTORY. [Chap. XIII. 

must be a head-chief; and when the tribes came to form a 
league, it was under the exigency of war, and whatever the pro- 
vision for civil administration, the war-chief was still the greatest 
factor of all. Early political organization, or rather the early 
germ of political organization, was based solely on the principle 
of kindred and concerned the people themselves with little or 
no regard to territory. The gentes of kindred formed into 
tribes, and tribes formed into leagues ; but with the increase of 
property and commerce, and the mixing of peoples, this tribal 
organization on the basis of kin did not answer the ends of gov- 
ernment, and it became necessary to find another base for polit- 
ical organization. Government came at length to rest on prop- 
erty within a small territorial district with definite boundaries, 
as its unit. Formerly the unit of organization was the gens or 
clan, now it was the deme, canton, or township. But whether 
it was gentes, united into tribes, and tribes into leagues in bar- 
baric government ; or whether it was demes united into coun- 
ties, and these into states in civilized government, there must 
be provision for unity of action ; and in times of war there must 
be a commander in chief. In the growth of English nationality, 
" marks grew into hundreds, hundreds into shires, shires into 
kingdoms ; " and throughout the entire process, each union rec- 
ognized some chief or head, the germ of monarchy in fact if 
not in name. It was to secure unity of action, and unity of 
action was made necessary by the imminence of disorder within 
and of war from without. 

In like manner arose the legislative branch of government. 
The chiefs and leading men must consult in a council of war to 
secure concert of action in what concerned the highest interests 
of all. And when the primary units of society grew by coales- 
ence, or by conquest and aggregation into a city, state or na- 
tion, the little war council grew along with it till it became the 
senate or parliament. Without the necessity of co-operation 
among all the powers of the state in war, the deliberative body 
could never have arisen, or if by miracle it had arisen, it could 
not have been maintained. This is well shown in the history of 



SeC. IOO.] ORIGIN OF LEGISLATIVE BODIES. 1 79 

the English parliament. If the co-operation of those whom it 
represented could have been done without in times of war, the 
parliament itself would have been dispensed with by the kings 
of England. But the kings when in need of supplies for war 
with France or Scotland, were largely at the mercy of parlia- 
ment, and must needs conciliate it. The legislative body thus 
acquired the consciousness and habit of power; and though 
at times, as under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, it did little 
more than register the sovereign's will, it was never put out of 
existence, and returning to the struggle for its due weight in 
government, it became at length the greatest political power of 
the realm. Parliament is literally the creature of conflict : 
"Parliament is, moreover, the one abiding result of all the seem- 
ingly blind struggling and righting, in the battlefield and else- 
where, of all the forecast and effort, which made the reigns of 
John, Henry III., and Edward I. among the most stirring in our 
history." — (James Rowley. Rise of the People and Growth of 
Parliament, 14.) And in regard to the general fact Herbert 
Spencer says : " There is ample reason to infer that the council 
of war originated the consultative body, and gave outlines to its 
structure. Defense against enemies was everywhere the need 
which originally prompted joint deliberation. For other pur- 
poses individual action, or action in small parties, might suffice; 
but for ensuring the general safety, combined action of the 
whole horde or tribe was necessary; and to secure this combined 
action must have been the first motive for a political gathering." 
— (Popular Science Monthly, June, 1881.) 

In very early times when war was the prevailing thought and 
condition of men, and each little confederacy of tribes depended 
on its alertness and courage to hold its own, the need for union 
and strength was so great that the military chiefs grew in prac- 
tical consequence and power, and came to be called "kings." 
But under the protection which walled cities afforded, the king 
became of less consequence, others took a hand in the affairs of 
government, and the political power was divided to the disad- 
vantage of the king. It was no longer as in preparation for war, 



180 GENERAL HISTORY. [Chap. XIII. 

a meeting of magnates to confer power on a chief; it was such 
meeting to divide with him the power which under civil condi- 
tions need not be exclusively lodged in one man. An oli- 
garchy might acquire the ascendency, or the city government 
with its little state might become a democracy. This was exem- 
plified in Greece and Italy. 

With relief from the constant danger of disastrous invasion, 
and with the progress of intelligence and discerning criticism, 
all governments in a certain stage of development, tend to 
become more liberal. The throne may still be retained, but its 
absolutism has departed. But there is to this a counter tendency 
which may supervene. In larger political aggregations, a large 
measure of liberty may not be possible without disorder, and 
intelligence itself may accept of despotism as the cure of 
anarchy. "In such communities as those of which Athens and 
Rome are the great examples — in that walled city which was the 
cradle of a large part of modern ideas — the organs of freedom, 
as we should say, continually increase in importance. The 
assemblies monopolize power. The king either disappears or 
becomes a mere shadow. But in communities spread over large 
spaces of land, and without walled towns, it is the king who 
governs, and all popular institutions tend to fall into decrepitude." 
— (H. S. Maine, Fortnightly, November, 1881). The growth 
of liberty with the growth of intelligence and security — the 
growth of centralized power with the increase of political 
elements and the extent of territory they cover; — these consti- 
tute essential conditions of the eternal conflict through which 
the face of political history has ever been changing. 

Not only does conflict make up the substance of history; it 
constitutes the very conditions of history. Without it there 
would have been none to attempt the record of events. Not 
only does conflict lead to social and political development; it 
leads to all development. It is the sine qua non of intellectual 
as well as of social evolution. It is at the bottom of all growth 
in intelligence, of all invention, of all progress whatever the kind, 
of man's very consciousness of superiority among the creatures 



SeC. 701. 1 THE RISE AND FALL OF NATIONS. l8l 

of the earth. "Not simply do we see that, in the competition 
among individuals of the same kind, survival of the fittest has 
from the beginning furthered production of a higher type, but 
we see that to the unceasing warfare between species are mainly 
due both growth and organization. Without universal conflict 
there would have been no development of the active powers." — 
(Spencer, Popular Science Monthly, November, 1880.) 

Section ioi. — Through all history run two antagonistic factors 
in the form of national integration and disintegration. Nations 
rise and fall, and as one goes up another goes down. Empires, 
like minor institutions, were not made and set up; they grew. 
In some instances the growth has been very rapid, in most it 
has been very slow. The starting point has often been a dimin- 
utive germ which increased by successive aggregations, and 
became more complicated in structure with increase of territory 
and power. But while this was taking place, a counter-force 
was at work testing the strength of every joint and ligament 
which held the parts together; as, for example, the revolt of prov- 
inces, the mutual hostility of ambitious chieftains, internal dis- 
sensions of whatever kind, the onset from without of powerful 
enemies. The successful resistance of such disturbing forces 
would add to the strength and stability of the political structure, 
but any serious breach in the defenses, internal or external, might 
prove to be fatal. Further on come luxury and the relaxation of 
early virtues; corruption within, favoritism, oppressive taxation, 
the decay of patriotism; at last feeble resistance, internal feuds, 
national overthrow. Every nation and empire must needs 
surround itself with a girdle of strength as a safeguard against 
explosive forces within and aggressive forces without, which are 
ever seeking for a weak point whereat to initiate changes 
toward disintegration. The strong governments of the earth 
have often been made such by the necessities of self-preservation. 
When freedom has deteriorated into anarchy, centralization 
and despotism have been welcomed for the peace they brought. 
It was this crowned Caesar, and Cromwell, and Napoleon — for 
they were all virtually crowned; and it is this that may some day 



1 82 GENERAL HISTORY. \Chap. XI IL 

crown an American. The great danger lies in the conflicting 
interests of classes, in the weakening loyalty of those who seek 
protection or look for privileges from the government, and in 
the conflict of great parties and the ambition of their unscrupu- 
lous chiefs. 

Section 102. — In every nation and among every people dur- 
ing the period of development, there is conflict between the 
two forces known as liberal and conservative, or progressive and 
reactionary. Everywhere is the conservative principle at work 
to maintain the existing status without change; and almost every- 
where are counter forces at work to produce change. Each of 
these tendencies is supported by a party, not necessarily well 
defined and formally organized, for very often these conflicting 
principles or some modification of them enter the creed of each 
of the opposing parties, the conservative prevailing in one, the 
progressive in the other. And in this respect, too, may the par- 
ties even change places; but none the less are the two principles 
arrayed against each other with their abettors joined in a never 
ending struggle for the advantage. It is the function of the 
progressive force in human affairs to overcome the resistance 
which is ever made by the forces of conservatism. History is 
but another form of mechanics, the principal idea of which is 
that of producing an effect by means of power. The power 
would be unnecessary and would have no use but for the resist- 
ance. The weight might be lifted, the obstruction removed, or 
the fabric wrought, merely by willing the result, were it not for 
the intractable nature of the materials. In the phenomena of 
mechanics, as already stated (Section 55), there are two classes 
of forces constantly acting in opposition to each other; the one, 
the resistance of gravitation, cohesion, etc., of bodies; the other, 
the aggression of the mechanical force by which the weight is 
lifted, the fabric made, the result of whatever kind, produced. 
The one would keep things as they are; the other would bring 
about change. A great deal of history might be written from 
this point of view. 

Some nations are now stationary; it is not likely they were 



Sec. 102.] POLITICAL PROGRESS AND REACTION. 1 83 

always so. These nations had origin, if not direct at least indirect, 
far back in primitive times, and change attended their course until 
they reached the political and social forms which have crystal- 
lized into permanency. Why the changes of polity accompany- 
ing growth and development? Increasing density of population, 
improvement by cultivation of the country inhabited, the neces- 
sities and conveniences out of which sprang commerce, internal 
and external, the influence of forming states on one another, 
the shock from outside aggression and learning from enemies; 
— while those were under way — themselves, under the circum- 
stances, natural and inevitable changes — they made the political 
and social aggregate different from age to age. Something like 
this must have taken place even in China. China only stopped 
movement when it was able in a certain measure to become a 
little self-sufficing world of itself. It must have had ample ter- 
ritory, with its resources developed according to the best skill 
of the times, a population well nigh its maximum, with a strong 
central power thoroughly organized, and able to exclude dis- 
turbing influences, coercing them into conformity, and defending 
the integrity of their social and political forms against all 
comers. 

This much might be ventured a priori, but the geography and 
history of China confirm it. The natural boundaries of the 
country are such that, in former times, the people were well 
protected by natural barriers from outside influences. The 
peculiar language of the country contributed to the same end. 
At the same time all the supplies of life were to be had within. 
Climate and soil have a wide range of diversity; and facilities 
for intercommunication between different sections favored 
internal commerce and the formation of a homogeneous people. 
China only became consolidated as an empire after a long 
period of conflict between state autonomy and the central 
power. The T'sin dynasty made progress toward unity, but it 
was only fully established under the T'ang monarchs; consoli- 
dation being thus completed after a struggle of a thousand years. 

But even this apparently impregnable rampart of institutions 



184 GENERAL HISTORY. \CJldp. XIII. 

is yielding, though slowly, to the aggression of modern influ- 
ences. The kind of forces which penetrate countries and 
change civilization are more subtile and less resistible than in 
former times, and even China is not able to hold out against 
them. The civilization of science, acting mainly through com- 
merce and invention, is edging its way into this old country, 
and the result is the inauguration of changes which will no 
doubt multiply, till the China of a few centuries hence will be 
quite unlike the stagnant China of the past. 

Japan, too, which was inert under the spell of Chinese litera- 
ture and custom, is waking up at the touch of a new civilization, 
and counter currents are setting in. While the Mikado and 
the priesthood have endeavored to maintain the old condition 
of things without change, a liberal party, composed of some of 
the princes and others belonging to the privileged classes have 
been agitating for change in the interest of progressive civiliza- 
tion, and with every indication of ultimate success. There is 
less inertia in the smaller country of Japan than in China, and 
the stationary elements are more easily set in motion. Japan is 
rapidly changing. 

A people so tenacious of their peculiar institutions as the 
Jews have not failed to leave signs of the changes wrought in 
them by their contact with other peoples. Their kings had to 
do with the outside world, and were prone to innovate under 
the common impulses which lie at the bottom of fashion, 
whether political, religious, or other. The prophets, under the 
zeal of an inspiration which was not held strictly to rule, may- 
have been given to innovation with other motives than those 
which actuated the kings, and in a different direction. The 
agents of conservatism among the Jewish people were the priests; 
and in what relates most intimately to the functions of the 
priesthood is it that the Jews have throughout shown most 
strikingly their characteristic pertinacity of opinion. They have 
illustrated in a peculiar manner the antithetical qualities of 
racial plasticity and rigidity, adapting themselves to the insti- 
tutions of the several nations under whose rule they live, but 



Sec. 103.] THE CONFLICT OF CLASSES. 1 85 

stubbornly maintaining at the same time their religious, and 
even their physical integrity, as a peculiar people. 

Section 103. — Another general form of historical discord 
arises from the conflict of classes. In the primitive state of 
society there is little of this; there were no classes and no class 
interests to come in conflict. With increase of population and 
territorial improvement, society forms into strata, and new- 
classes and professions come into existence; and the social 
diversity increases with the progress of civilization. Among 
ancient peoples there might be a clashing of interests between 
the aristocrats and the common people, or between the slaves 
and their masters, but none of the diversified shapes of antago- 
nism constantly arising as ghosts, that will not down, between 
the numerous class-interests of modern society. As, for example, 
the battle between labor and capital was never so clearly defined 
as at present, and never so hopeless of peaceable adjustment. 
Not only so, but the different divisions of the great army of 
workingmen are set against the interests of one another. It is 
the aim of a labor union to limit the number of workers in order 
to enhance the price which all laboring men must pay for its 
product; and when other labor unions conspire in the same way 
to keep up their wages through the price of their product, the 
contest becomes a very complicated one, and their mutual vic- 
tories neutralize one another. Even the wealthy may turn to the 
agitation of adverse interests in relation to the measure of values, 
taking opposite sides as their possessions may consist in money 
and credits, or in other property, the one desiring to make money 
dear, the other to make it cheap. The great manufacturers want 
a high tariff for protection, and the mercantile class want duties 
to be confined to a few articles of general consumption; and 
thus the great agricultural class becomes the grist to be ground 
between these two as the upper and nether millstones. There 
could have been nothing of this kind in early times, although 
there is a great deal of it now. These and kindred matters will 
come up for brief consideration in future chapters. 



1 86 GENERAL HISTORY. {Chap. XIII 



CHAPTER XIV. 

GRECIAN HISTORY. 

Section 104. — The current of Grecian history had been run- 
ning for ages, and had reached a considerable degree of civiliza- 
tion before any trustworthy record of details was made. But 
from this time on till Grecian independence came to an end, it 
is one continual display of conflict in the several spheres of life. 
Conflict made Greece what she was, elevating her into promi- 
nence as one of the original forces of civilization and great land- 
marks of the world's history; and when she succumbed to Mac- 
edonian rule, and afterwards became merged into the Roman 
empire, the changes came about only through conflict. 

We first hear of Greece as a congeries of little states not 
united by political organization, but only by common kinship 
and by common interests, so far as they might at any time feel 
that their interests were common. This, however, did not often 
occur, being dependent on the condition of threatened danger 
from some great non-Grecian power. But even then, the Greeks 
never all united under one banner; several Grecian states, 
states even centrally located, sent earth and water to Xerxes in 
token of submission. 

The leading forms of conflict as illustrated by Grecian history, 
may be stated as follows: First, between rival citizens for the 
attainment of power ; secondly, the strife between classes which 
divided on the line of oligarchy and democracy ; thirdly, the 
struggle between state autonomy and empire; fourthly, the con- 
tests between states; fifthly, the great wars between Greeks and 
barbarians ; to which may be added, sixthly, the conflict between 
slaves and their masters, a chronic terror, especially in Sparta 
where the Helots once in arms proved themselves formidable, 
and where the dread of their rising seems to have been perpetual. 



Sec. I06.] INTELLECTUAL STIMULUS AT ATHENS. 1 87 

Section 105. — As Grecian civilization found its highest 
expression in Athens, so here do we find the fullest illustration 
of conflict and its consequences. Under the democracy of 
Athens every freeman was a legislator and sovereign, having part 
in the making of laws and in their execution. Before him were 
debated all matters of public concern, and if he chose, he might 
himself take part in the discussion. But, if as an individual he 
preferred charges against another, or was himself the defendant 
in a contest at law, he must needs plead his own case before a 
large body of his fellow-citizens known as the dikastery. For 
these political and forensic contests, training was necessary, and 
the result of it all was an intellectual quickening which especially 
characterized the Athenians. Athens was not isolated, but had 
social and political relations with the other cities and states of 
Greece, and whatever the results of her advantages, they were 
imparted in some measure to others, while her own keen sensi- 
bility profited by whatever of originality may have been indigen- 
ous in the other branches of the Hellenic race. Athens more 
than any other city of Greece produced great artists, orators, 
statesmen, and philosophers, although she had by no means a 
monopoly of distinguished men. But that they were here in 
larger proportion than in any other Grecian state, is due to the 
fact of freer conditions for the full play of those forces in the 
form of individual emulation and combat which result in devel- 
opment. Athens was especially a maritime city; and Athenians 
came in contact with a diversity of peoples, and thought was 
stimulated, and progress abetted by manifold forms of friction 
between minds of diversified education. Athens thus became a 
centre of culture which drew to itself the aspiring genius of all 
Greece. 

Section 106. — In Grecian history we have examples of con- 
flict between monarchy and some more popular form of govern- 
ment; but far more between oligarchy and democracy. This 
constituted a chronic struggle among the people of almost every 
Grecian state, generation after generation, during the most 
flourishing period of Grecian history. Athens became the prin- 



1 88 GREEK HISTORY. [Chap. XIV, 

cipal of the democratic states, while Sparta, though she had 
kings, was yet an oligarchy, and the leading example of aristo- 
cratic government. With the power of the two factions almost 
equally balanced in many of the states, this side now winning 
and then the other, with Sparta to abet the oligarchs, and Athens 
the democrats, we may well conceive the instability and turbu- 
lence which arose from this cause. Some of the crudest trag- 
edies of Grecian warfare pertained to these contests for power 
between oligarchs and democrats, and grew out of long standing 
feuds and the bitterness of party strife which only wanted power, 
at any time, to wash out in blood a long score of personal and 
partisan grievances. We need only name the despotism, vio- 
lence, and treachery of the Four Hundred and of the Thirty 
at Athens, the bloody wars growing out of this partisan conflict 
at Thebes, and the worse than butchery of three hundred Kor- 
kyrian aristocrats. 

Section 107. — Already when Greece enters into the histor- 
ical period, there are a great number of distinct and independent 
states without acknowledged hegemony or headship among 
them. They no doubt existed originally as small bodies of 
kindred people who, through long feuds and petty wars became 
united into the larger, though still comparatively small, aggre- 
gates, with which the historical period begins. These little states 
acknowledged their kinship and sometimes united in small con- 
federacies with a specific object in view, but they were not 
bound together by any permanent political organization. No 
one seems to have made head against the rest so as to deprive 
them of independence, and no foreign power, if it ever 
attempted, had succeeded in subjecting them. In these early 
times when there was little navigation, and when that little crept 
close to the shores and ventured only a little way from home; 
when roads were primitive and methods of traveling clumsy, 
and mountains were almost impassable for commerce and for 
armies, the chances for maintaining political isolation were very 
great. The topography of Greece was especially favorable for 
such isolation, since so many of the autonomous states had for 



Sec. IO7. ,] CONFEDERATION IN GREECE, 1 89 

their seat little patches of territory either surrounded by water, 
or enclosed by mountains, with no ready access to one another 
in early times. This period of political isolation of petty states, 
cities, and islands seems to have persisted so long that the habit 
of autonomy — of independence in government, each little state 
for itself — became organized into a constitutional instinct. How 
far this contributed to the ultimate greatness of Greece it would 
be difficult to say ; perhaps the emulation and rivalry, and the 
hard knocks which they gave one another, may have acted in 
some respects as a stimulus to Greek evolution. The injury 
that it did is manifest enough. Autonomy antagonized empire. 
Autonomy prevented even hearty and needful confederation, 
and without steady and persistent co-operation for the great ends 
of national existence, Greece could not do what seemed to lie 
so easily within her reach. Although Sparta was more than 
once the leading power in Greece, yet did she make it her 
especial mission to urge upon each and every Greek state sepa- 
rate government (by oligarchy); and this political isolation 
seemed to comport with their ineradicable instincts, for the 
Greeks were never a united people. 

In Grecian history we may clearly see what those forces are 
which integrate states and peoples. Already had the Persian 
empire swallowed up the Greeks in Asia Minor, when it threat- 
ened the Greeks in Europe. The autonomous states made an 
effort to unite for the common defense, and to a certain extent 
were successful. So far as mutual co-operation and the inter- 
change of thought and contagion of feeling under this stimulus 
contributed to the advance of Greek civilization, it was due to 
pressure from without. Danger from Persia made unity of effort 
a necessity. In the conduct of this war, the activity and execu- 
tive efficiency of Athens made her a great naval power, brought 
her into prominence, and gave her prestige among the weaker 
states of Greece. Athens became the head of a confederacy 
whose members were to contribute men and money to the com- 
mon defense. This may be regarded as a nation in an incipient 
form. It was organized to protect Greece against Persia, but 



190 GREEK HISTORY. \Chctp. XIV' 

no sooner had the danger passed away than the virus of state 
autonomy resumed its wonted activity, and members became 
remiss in the discharge of their confederate duties. When mem- 
bers of the compact became recusant it devolved on Athens as its 
head to enforce submission. Recusant states were brought to a 
sense of their confederate duties by force of arms. This resulted 
in actual empire — a sort of fragmentary empire under Athens in 
the midst of the Grecian world. But the integrity of this 
union was not long maintained, the autonomous proclivities of its 
members, and of other Grecian states, with Sparta at their head, 
first contracted the limits of the Athenian empire, and then broke 
it in pieces. Sparta preached autonomy during her campaign 
against Athenian power; but when she overthrew Athens and 
found herself superior in Greece, she very naturally played the 
role of an autocrat. Her general, Lysander, subverted the 
Grecian democracies and set up oligarchies in their stead with 
a Spartan harmost or governor and a Spartan garrison, to make 
sure that the governing should be done in Spartan fashion. 
Here was virtual empire again. If now the Greek mind had 
been equal to the conception of comprehensive political organiza- 
tion, there might have been Greek nationality, whose integrity 
at home and strength abroad would have been invincible. With 
less penchant among Greeks for state autonomy, and more brain 
among Spartans for political combination, and there would have 
been no Alexander the Great and no Roman Empire. 

The order of events in the creation of an empire appears to 
be something like this: Pressure from without leads to organiza- 
tion within for the purpose of resistance; while the ambition of 
a conquering state with sufficient command of organizing genius, 
throws the net of political union over the conquered, more pas- 
sive, or weaker states, for security at home and additional con- 
quests abroad. Grecian history shows strikingly how fear of 
danger from without may coerce reluctant states into union for 
defense; but it was reserved for Roman history to illustrate how 
ambition and the organizing instinct sword in hand might create 
an empire. 



Sec. Io8?\ GREEK ALLIANCES UNSTABLE COMPOUNDS. 191 

Section 108. — We have seen how the Greek love of isolated 
state government antagonized political unity, and prevented the 
formation of a Greek empire. The result was the constant war 
of Greek states with one another, remitting only from war 
w r ithin, and then not fully, when there was an enemy without to 
repel. No sooner had an individual state become comparatively 
flourishing and powerful than jealousy and fear would arise in 
the breasts of neighbors, when a league would be formed against 
it to curtail its resources, and keep its power within bounds. 
Sparta was greatly troubled when Themistocles fortified the 
Piraeus, and afterwards when Pericles built the long walls of 
Athens. Thebes so hated Athens that she wished the city anni- 
hilated at the close of the Peloponnesian war. Afterwards Athens 
helped Thebes against Sparta, but as soon as the brilliant 
achievements of Epaminondas made Thebes a power in Greece, 
Athens became jealous and envious, and acted under the stimu- 
lus of these petty motives. There is no lack of such examples 
in Grecian history — of jealousy, envy, hate, battle, growing out 
of the Greek doctrine of state sovereignty. 

A single state, however, was seldom pitted against a single 
state, the war was usually between two leading States and their 
confederates. The Peloponnesian war, with Athens and Sparta as 
the leading powers, and with the other states of European Greece 
on one side or the other, affords the type in exaggerated propor- 
tions of the Grecian internecine wars. This was more general, 
lasting, and destructive than the numerous other wars in which 
a part of the states were neutral and merely spectators of the 
conflicts. The several forms of Greek alliances and the more or 
less limited extent of their acceptance by the states, constitute 
a singular net-work of variable complication. The autonomous 
states may be regarded as political atoms with unlike degrees of 
affinity for one another. They united in unstable compounds 
which readily decomposed and formed into new compounds. 
These might attract one another and form larger aggregates, or 
they might repel — and repulsion was almost sure to prevail. A 
larger state might associate with smaller states guaranteeing 



192 GREEK HISTORY. \Chap. XIV. 

the autonomy of each, and several such states acting as self- 
sovereign might form an alliance. Or, a larger state might have 
smaller states for dependencies forming a little empire, and 
these little empires might be dependent on a still stronger state as 
the head of a larger empire. When this, as we have seen, once 
obtained under the imperial supervision of Athens, the opposing 
power was an alliance between autonomous states under the 
headship of Sparta. 

There was abundant opportunity for the play of variable 
segregation and aggregation among states and cities which num- 
bered between two hundred and three hundred. Indeed, a 
very few states may illustrate such complication as to render it 
no easy task to form a distinct picture of it in the mind. Thus, 
at one time, Athens was allied with Sparta and righting Thebes; 
Sparta was allied with Athens and fighting Argos and Thebes ; 
Thebes was allied with a part of Arcadia and with Argos, and 
fighting Sparta and Athens ; Argos was allied with Thebes and 
Arcadia and fighting Sparta; there was division in Arcadia, but 
most of its cities were allied with Thebes and at war with Sparta; 
Ellis was friendly with Thebes but unfriendly with Arcadia, an 
ally of Thebes. 

Section 109. — If there had been cordial union between the 
states, Philip could never have made headway against the liber- 
ties of Greece. It was not merely that Sparta battered away at 
the Athenian empire for twenty-six bloody years till it fell, but 
when the Olynthian confederacy arose, she crushed that; and 
Athens no longer a master-builder in Greek nationality was now 
mean enough to take up the work where Sparta left off, and 
maintain by force the isolation of cities which were struggling to 
unite their strength in the Olynthian confederacy. Had these 
cities been permitted concert of action in a common cause, 
Philip would not have broken through so easily, if at all; but as 
it was, he cut them off one by one, and thus successfully made 
his way into Greece. The opposition to Philip at any time was 
never more than a fragment of Greek power brought together 
under the momentary stimulus of danger; hence Greece soon 



Sec. IIO.] THE END OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE. 1 93 

became the helpless subject of a barbarian conqueror. Mac- 
edon was passing through the upward, while Greece had entered 
on the downward, curve of historical movement; and both 
changes were taking place amidst, and were equally due to, the 
storms of conflict. 

In the long struggle between nationality and autonomy, the 
latter won, and the seal of its victory was the ruin of Greece. 
It is true that, in a generation after the defeat at Chaeronea, when 
the strong rule of Alexander had been broken under the dissen- 
sions of his successors, Greece enjoyed, under the liberality 
of Demetrius, a period of comparative independence which was 
employed in precisely the old way, in the attempts of one party 
to build up, and another to pull down. The Achaean League was 
formed to defend Greece against Macedonia and the Romans; 
but Athens never joined it, and Sparta became an unwilling 
member. This league was a union like that of the United 
States (Freeman); and when Aratus came to do it noble service 
by word and action, it was again Sparta that incurred the 
infamy of overthrowing it. Cleomenes, who had divided his 
own and others' lands among landless Spartans for the sake of 
Spartan equality and the revival of Spartan interest in the glory 
of the commonwealth, yet fought to overthrow Aratus' scheme 
of a Peloponnesian league, a measure of real statesmanship and 
of far greater value than Cleomenes' agrarianism. When Aratus 
was overcome by Cleomenes, he formed an alliance with Antig- 
onus of Macedonia, which proved successful in the overthrow 
of Sparta for the first time in history; but Greek independence 
was now in worse condition than before. Soon afterward Mac- 
edonia was conquered by the Romans, and then Greece suc- 
cumbed to the arms of Metellus and Mummius, and became a 
part of the Roman empire. 

Section no. — The greatest elements of Pan-Hellenic unity 
had not been political, so much as religious and social. These 
were kinship, the use of the same language, the same gods and 
myths, and the great Hellenic games, the Pythian, Isthmian, 
the Nemean, and especially the Olympic. But while these great 



194 GREEK HISTORY. [Chap. XIV. 

festivals were a practical element of Grecian brotherhood, they 
could not have had the charm of interest they inspired, had it 
not been for the Grecian love of contest. Whatever virtue they 
possessed for the good of Greece, was dependent, from our point 
of view, on that central force, the fascination of strife. 

A sort of Hellenic unity early took form in the organization 
of the Amphictyonic Council, which consisted of two members 
from each of twelve races of the one great Hellenic family. 
One of its earliest oaths bound the league not to destroy any 
Amphictyonic town, nor to cut off any such town from running 
water. But this assembly was religious rather than political. It 
had no power to enforce its decrees, as Grecian history abun- 
dantly shows. While it may have maintained its formal integrity, 
Greece was torn to pieces by internal dissension. "A power 
which can be defied with impunity is no power." — (J. F. Ste- 
phen); and the Amphictyonic body without the sword had little 
weight as the missionary of peace. The belief of the Hellenic 
races in their community of origin, their use of the same lan- 
guage, their great festivals, their consultation of the same oracles, 
their rehearsal of the same poems, their Amphictyonic assembly, 
all told for Grecian brotherhood, but hardly weakened, much 
less neutralized the penchant of Greek peoples to become 
embroiled with one another. 

We get from their history the impression that conflict was 
the prevailing idea among even the best of the Greeks. Brasidas, 
the Spartan, said: "We are a few in the midst of many ene- 
mies, and can only maintain ourselves by fighting and conquer- 
ing." Epaminondas said that Thebes could only hold her 
ascendency in Greece by maintaining an army well trained and 
active. Philopcemen, a successful defender of the Achaean 
League, despised those as worthless who were not versed in the 
art of war. Sophocles makes Ajax say of his son: 

" Bring him this way; for if he be the son 
Of Ajax, the fresh blood that hangs about me 
Will not affright him; he must learn like me, 
In earliest years, the savage laws of war, 
And be inured to scenes of death and slaughter." 



Sec. 122.] PRE-EMINENCE OF ATHENS. 195 

Demosthenes affirmed that it was the interest of Athens that 
Sparta and Thebes should be weak. That reveals a great deal; 
but one would suppose he might have thought differently in the 
presence of Philip at Chaeronea, if Sparta, and Thebes, and 
Argos, and all the other cities of Greece had been strong, and 
had acted as if their interest was one with that of Athens, as 
indeed, in the modern economico-political point of view, it was. 

Section hi. — At the time it occurred, the Persian invasion 
of Greece no doubt seemed to be a dire calamity unmixed with 
good. But the very danger bore on its wings blessings to 
Greece. It brought a large portion of the Hellenic people into 
active sympathy with one another, and stirred within them a 
heroism of endeavor which left them more willing and able 
after than before the war, to achieve results in other fields of 
activity. It was the vigor and triumph of successful resistance, 
the momentum of aroused energy, this being one of the ways 
in which conflict tells for a higher order of execution. It is 
true that, while Athens was conspicuous for her wealth of intel- 
lectual production, Sparta remained inactive and obscure, a result 
which is to be attributed in part to the multiplied forms of con- 
tact in which active commercial relations bring a people, and in 
which Athens had pre-eminently the advantage. It is a general 
fact of history that commercial peoples are more progressive 
than isolated peoples, such as inhabit mountain districts and 
little frequented islands. Athens was in free communication 
with her neighbors; Sparta, by her Lycurgan institutions, shut 
herself up and maintained her barbarism in spite of the pro- 
gressive activity of other states. The diversity of incident forces 
which fell on Athens strengthened one another and told for her 
development; having shut out most of such forces, Sparta could 
not be jogged out of routine by the Persian invasion, or indeed, 
by any great event of her history. 

Section 112. — Macedonian ascendency and the empire of 
Alexander were unfortunate. No doubt the contact of peoples 
in the course of conquest was attended with some good in the 
form of intellectual stimulus. Peoples were made acquainted 



I96 GREEK HISTORY. [C/iaf. XI V. 

with one another, and the facilities for commerce were some- 
what extended. The knowledge of geography was greatly 
enlarged, and mankind had better ideas of the world in which 
they lived. But the empire was too short-lived to develop to 
the full its capabilities for good. The force of repulsion among 
its members was greater than their cohesion, and they parted 
company in the midst of great political disturbance. In Mace- 
donia and the other states of Alexander's empire, after his death 
(as indeed in all previous times), was exemplified the fact so gen- 
eral in ancient history, that in contests for power, the most auda- 
cious and unscrupulous were almost sure to be successful, while 
by means of assassination and other forms of violence, the milder 
and weaker contestants were put out of the way. Here was polit- 
ical selection in a free fight for the ruling power. Why should 
it not be so ? The fights were free whatever else was bound. 
Fights always had been free ever since the origin of man on 
earth, and long before, and the strongest and most wily sur- 
vived, while the simple and weaker went to the wall. By habit 
and heredity this shaped the character of surviving peoples. 
Shrewdness, violence, unscrupulousness were the results of selec- 
tion which was no doubt perfectly natural, and such as were most 
largely endowed with these capabilities came necessarily to the 
top as rulers ; and so the strong were held to be good, and the 
weak bad ; and all this occurred and only could occur by virtue 
of conflict. By conflict nations rose and fell. To conflict must 
we refer the evil ; and without conflict the good could not have 
been. Blot out from our conception of causes the various forms 
of antagonism, and our conception of man's career would be 
reduced to that of a strifeless blank. "Inconceivable as have 
been the horrors caused by this universal antagonism which, 
beginning with the chronic hostilities of small hordes tens of 
thousands of years ago, has ended in the occasional vast battles 
of immense nations, we must nevertheless admit that without 
them the world would still have been inhabited only by men of 
feeble types, sheltering in caves and living on wild food." — (H. 
Spencer, Popular Science Monthly, November, 1880). 



Sec. IIJ.'] TROUBLE WITH THE MYTHS. 1 97 

Section 113. — Ever since mankind became capable of critical 
thinking, has there been war within the domain of mind between 
what was thought and what was believed. The earliest traces of 
this struggle under the expansion of the Greek intellect, possess 
an extreme interest in being so precisely like what is at this 
moment going on in the intellectual world. When the Greeks 
awoke to historical consciousness, they were in possession of a 
vast inheritance of myth which involved such inconsistency and 
improbability as to give offense to the rational side of character 
then in course of rapid development. These myths were allied 
with religious and patriotic feeling; they had for ages been 
implicitly believed ; at all times in Grecian life had they floated 
in the social atmosphere as an essential element of education, — ■ 
proclaimed by poets, declaimed by rhetors, rehearsed by the 
people, built into imposing religious forms; — all youth received 
and assimilated them as a part of their mental constitution. 
This was as true of philosophers and learned men as of others ; 
but while as children they might have implicit faith in the current 
stories, yet as men they liberated an intellectual force which 
unsettled this infantile faith. There were fabulous places as 
well as fabulous incidents; and when the extension of geo^ 
graphical knowledge extinguished the places, it made trouble 
with the legends. 

According to those primitive stories, all natural phenomena as 
well as all human affairs were managed by the capricious will of 
the gods in a manner at once grotesque and contradictory. 
Observing men saw that there was regular succession in nature, 
and that it was probably taking place without special intervention 
of the gods in any part of the chain of causation. Perhaps, the 
first conclusion after the dawn of this new light was that in old 
times, it was done differently. The test which they applied to 
the present refused, under a revolt of feeling, to apply to the 
past. Arrian and Julius Csesar discarded the notion of contem- 
porary Amazons, but believed in their existence in former times, 
as Pausanius discredited the new miracles, but believed in the old. 
But a still further advance of the critical faculty would organize 



198 GREEK history. \Chap. XIV. 

revolt against such explanation, and look out for some other 
method of dressing up the legends into fitness for companion- 
ship with rational thought. The greatest absurdities would be 
lopped off, and the most palpable inaccuracies neutralized by 
some ingenious conceit. Two systems of interpretation were 
adopted to retain substantially the patrimony of myth, and at the 
same time satisfy the ever more exacting rationality of mind. It 
was declared that the mythical stories were the exaggerations of 
fact, and that by trimming off the superfluities, there would remain 
a nucleus of history worthy to be received. There was nothing 
like historical evidence on which to present these truncated myths 
to good society as historical realities, but it was agreeable to the 
Greek mind to give them entertainment as such, and this was a 
sufficient reason why they should not be thrown into the common 
limbo of infantile and discarded things. Another method was 
to allegorize the fictions, as if they had been invented by philoso- 
phers who meant to bury a deep meaning in stories about heroes 
and gods. 

The obvious conflict between the mythical stories and the 
canons of criticism was a ghost that would not down. It haunted 
the Greek mind through all the period of its greatest intellectual 
activity. The difficulties of the problem only intensified the 
importunity for its solution, and the greatest minds addressed 
themselves to the task of reconciliation. Grote (our principal 
authority for the preceding statement) says that, "To accommo- 
date the ancient myths to an improved tone of sentiment and a 
newly-created canon of credibility, was a function which even 
the wisest Greeks did not disdain, and which occupied no small 
proportion of the whole intellectual activity of the nation." All 
of which was the result of that consciousness of conflict between 
ideas which had come -through different channels into the Greek 
mind, and had found lodgment there as next-door neighbors. 



CHAPTER XV. 

ROMAN HISTORY — THE REPUBLIC. 

Section 114. — Very early in the evolution of human society 
does the individual find himself limited in the exercise of his 
sovereignty ; he discovers that his own will is not supreme. This 
is well shown in primitive Italy. There were the individual's 
obligations to his clan, the clan's obligations to the canton, the 
canton's obligations to the league. The higher obligations met 
and hedged in the range of the lower; hence, absolute freedom 
was and is a chimera. These limitations, this self-denial and 
self-control led to what is regarded in history and life as a good. 
The firmest compact gave the greatest strength to resist invasion 
or to wage aggressive war; hence the best organized political 
unity most readily enlarged the area of its activity (Bagehot); 
it conquered, became still stronger, and was in the way to play 
a great role in history. This is exemplified in Latium, the 
originally organized kernel of the Roman power that was to be. 
First, Rome proper waged war with the neighboring communi- 
ties and incorporated several of them, enlarging her territory 
from the size of a township to that of a county. A league was 
then entered into that "there shall be peace between the 
Romans and all communities of the Latins as long as heaven 
and earth shall endure." This peace at home meant more 
effectual war abroad. 

Section 115. — Italian soil did not escape the conflict between 
different peoples in commerce and civilization. The Carthagen- 
ians, Hellenes, and Etruscans struggled for supremacy in the 
adjacent waters, resorting to piracy as well as to the legitimate 
means of naval conflict. While the Etruscans were a people of 
Italy, and both Hellenes and Carthagenians had colonies and 



200 ROMAN HISTORY — THE REPUBLIC. \Chap. XV. 

carried on industries on Italian soil, their commercial struggle 
could not but exercise a material influence on the development 
of the various elements of Italian power. A sort of natural 
selection by the warlike contact of the early peoples of Italy 
brought into the foremost position such as were capable of act- 
ing with a unitized and persistent purpose. Settlements on the 
coast and in the rich plains grew into sufficient strength to 
attract and repel, thus exercising an influence on the ultimate 
destiny of Italy ; while the people on the mountains, dwelling 
far apart, never acquired sufficient weight by coherence to exer- 
cise either a disturbing or controlling influence over their neigh- 
bors. 

Section 116. — But this political and social aggregation which 
gave self-preservation at home and conquest abroad, and 
afforded an essential condition of national evolution, was by no 
means inconsistent with perpetual strife within. This was emi- 
nently the case in Rome. 

The Romans tired of life-kings; the monarchy came to an 
end; and in its stead two consuls were annually elected, each 
with the power of a king while in office. There was a perpet- 
ual annual succession of two kings, instead of one for life; the 
arbitrary power of the one should neutralize the arbitrary power 
of the other and save the people from the evil of irresponsible 
and unchecked tyranny. This might work very well for the 
patricians, the ruling class, the representatives of the primitive 
clans, the aristocracy of Rome. But there sprung up another 
class, freedmen, foreigners, common people or plebeians who 
conceived that they should have political privileges as a means 
of defense against the oppression of the ruling order. Here 
was the ground and origin of social and political contests which 
lasted, with only an occasional lull, for many generations. 
Armed revolt against unalleviated oppression was necessary to 
secure the recognition of the people's right to exercise political 
power. A new office was created to meet the case — the tribu- 
nate of the people. Two tribunes were annually elected who 
had power to negative any administrative act of the consuls. 



Sec. Il6.~\ PERSISTENCE OF CASTE PREJUDICE. 201 

Here were four orifices of the Roman government each clothed 
with almost equal authority, each supreme with little division of 
function, and hence, we might surely infer, if we did not know, 
that the action of the government should illustrate internal dis- 
sension quite as much as executive unity. 

Early in the "commonwealth" of Rome, influential plebeians 
were admitted to the senate without the privilege of taking part 
in its discussions. It was only when the contest had been 
waged for sixty years longer that plebeians were permitted to 
speak in the senate. This privilege was at last granted to the 
tribunes, who for this purpose were allowed to occupy a seat in 
front of the senate chamber. The first plebeian magistrate was 
elected as one of the decemviri just sixty years after the expul- 
sion of the Tarquins and the setting up of the commonwealth. 
A struggle of eighty-three years more was necessary to prepare 
the way for the election of a plebeian as consul. Eleven years 
later a plebeian might become dictator, and in a few years more, 
the censorships and praetorships, which had been created and rig- 
idly guarded as aristocratic offices, were opened to the plebeians, 
one hundred and seventy-three years after the founding of the 
commonwealth. But this by no means ended the social war- 
fare of these two orders of Roman society. Even after mar- 
riage had been legalized between them, and plebeians had been 
admitted to the highest offices in the state, plebeian wives were 
not recognized by the "patrician dames" as social equals; and 
spiteful opposition was kept up by the patricians long after their 
monopoly of certain great offices had ceased to exist. The like 
caste-prejudice obtained in some of the Grecian states, against 
the new families by the old who could trace their lineage back 
to the gods. Whence it appears that the modern trick of 
assuming personal superiority on the basis of some factitious 
merit is of very ancient origin and not really a product of mod- 
ern degeneracy. 

This long conflict was not based wholly on the distinction 
of blood. Many of the common people became wealthy, 
and then as now wealth gave power and prestige. Wealth 



202 ROMAN HISTORY — THE REPUBLIC. \CJlCtp. XV. 

and rank naturally united by a common sympathy against the 
comparatively poor. The successful plebeians did not always 
use their power to lift the burthen of oppression off their less 
fortunate brethren. Owing to unjust laws which, as usual, 
favored the law-making classes, hard times and suffering were 
perpetual rather than occasional. Dissatisfaction made itself 
felt; revolt was often threatened and sometimes executed ; hence 
measures for the partial relief of distress. 

Section 117. — Notwithstanding all these forms of discord 
within Rome, she was slowly gathering strength to become the 
mistress of the world. Here, as elsewhere, is illustrated the 
fact that, in every aggregation of human units there are explosive 
forces within ever ready to burst it asunder, while counter-forces, 
be they in the form of internal sympathy and cohesion or 
external pressure, bind it together, and with a hoop-like function 
prevent it from flying to pieces. It may seem paradoxical, but 
this hoop-like function was sometimes opportunely exercised for 
Rome by the invasion of an enemy. 

The earlier history of Carthage, Rome's great enemy, illus- 
trates this view. The mother cities, Tyre and Sidon, were not 
warlike, and were wont to pay tribute rather than sustain a seige. 
The aggression Of the Hellenes in the waters of the Mediter- 
ranean put the Carthagenians on their defense for a sufficient 
field of commercial activity, and for their very existence as a 
commercial people. This developed a more restive spirit among 
the Phoenician people than was usual with them. On the down- 
fall of Tyre, many of her citizens came to Carthage and brought 
the skill of the old to be united with the energy of the new to 
the building up of their adopted city. But wealth was not the 
only source of Carthagenian power; there was discipline. The 
hard knocks she had received forged and bound together the 
elements of that power which enabled her to become so distin- 
guished in history. 

When Hannibal, a product of the Carthagenian stock, invaded 
Italy with such brilliant results, he was able only to shake and 
shock, but not to rupture (except in a partial manner) the Italian 



Sec. Iiy.'l ANTAGONIZING POLITICAL FORCES, 203 

confederacy. And although Italy lost a half million of her best 
men in the war with Hannibal, there is no doubt but she was 
abler soon after the close of it to cope with Macedon and west- 
ern Asia and Carthage, than if she had not learned in the schools 
of Hannibal. By contrast, the surmountable forms of adversity, 
in various ways, give strength. 

More particularly, what were the explosive forces within 
Rome? The invidious distinction between different states of 
Italy in regard to their connection with the government, and 
their voice or want of voice in the same ; the concentration of 
political power in the nobility of Rome, in consequence of 
which the voting citizens with the semblance of power, were 
reduced to a nullity; the oppressions by the rich and high-born 
of the poorer classes, and the opposition, agitation, and struggle 
for reform which this constantly engendered; the corrupting 
power of wealth in Rome, breeding a sordid spirit, blunting the 
better instincts of our common nature, crushing out of existence 
a considerable portion of the once independent rural classes, 
and at the same time giving rise to a rabble class into which 
facile demagogism struck its roots and nourished luxuriantly; — 
and to these must be added the liability to corruption of Roman 
governors abroad, taking bribes under specious names and 
tempted to rule for their own emolument rather than for the 
good of their subjects, and withal robbing the people under the 
pretext of governing : — these were the principal of the weaken- 
ing, discordant, and disruptive forces within. It is not so easy 
to designate the forces which antagonized these and bound the 
empire so firmly together. That they existed the fact of Roman 
unity so long maintained abundantly attests. Physical endur- 
ance, persistency of purpose, pride of country, strict organiza- 
tion, the wont of rule, the awe of authority, Roman confidence 
in Romans, their system of conventional repression, their social 
severity and self-denial — each of these had something to do with 
the supremacy of Rome; and all were more or less strengthened 
and directed by the storms amidst which the Roman power had 
its origin and development. The conflicts within and without 



Z04 ROMAN HISTORY — THE REPUBLIC. \Chap. XV. 

B.ome were the conditions from which Roman greatness sprung. 

Roman development proceeded from the play of antagonistic 
forces; and, great as that development was, it was anything but 
unmixed good. Along with the gains came losses. With wealth 
and power came the indulgence of ease and luxury with all the 
train of attendant evils. With a rich and ruling class at one 
extreme was developed an indigent and dependent class at the 
other. Original simplicity, frugality, and manly integrity were 
displaced by sordid selfishness, the vanity of display, and the 
intrigues of demagogism. The diseases were engendered 
which ate into the vitals of free Rome and doomed her to death 
in the midst of her splendors. 

Section 118. — Human hunts had been carried on to procure 
slaves for the Romans. The antagonism between slave and free 
labor quite annihilated the latter in Rome and deprived it of all 
dignity in Italy. These white slaves of Italy and Sicily suffered 
a fate which is hardly equalled in the annals of human cruelty. 
Often compelled to labor without the means of sustenance in 
supply, they had to plunder in order to live. Slaves became 
robbers. Slaves were compelled to kill each other in the arena 
for the amusement of the people. Slave insurrections were 
frequent; and bands of desperate men with arms in their hands 
were sometimes a match for the Roman legions. The rich 
abetted slavery, and slavery extinguished the middle class, the 
worthiest citizens of Rome. Slavery and war drove their victims 
into outlawry whereby was fed and strengthened a system of 
organized piracy on the Mediterranean. Piracy became an 
institution with a definite polity, and it assumed to treat on 
equal terms with kings. It played at sovereignty and held itself 
to be as legitimate as Roman oligarchy or Asiatic despotism. 
All were selfish, cruel, and aggressive, with disregard of others* 
rights, and if the pirates suffer in comparison, it is for their com- 
parative want of the counter elements of activity by which the 
state takes form as the shield in some measure of social rights 
and the home virtues. 



SeC. 120.] CENTRES OF CONFLICT. 205 

Section 119. — At length the union of the Roman states 
which had stood the shock of defeat at Cannae and the years of 
fearful struggle with Hannibal, gradually became weakened. 
States became dissatisfied with their exclusion from active share 
in the government of Italy, and out of this dissatisfaction grew 
the social wars in which were destroyed millions of property and 
hundreds of thousands of people. After this came the storms 
of the great civil war; and at length, the internecine conflicts 
which shattered the commonwealth were stilled under the fatality 
of empire. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

ROMAN HISTORY THE EMPIRE. 



Section 120. — Under the empire there were two or three 
great centers of conflict 1. That between the Roman power 
within and the barbarian power without. 2. That between the 
pagan and the Christian religion, the one being in its descending, 
the other in its ascending curve. 3. That between the so-called 
spiritual and temporal powers, the former struggling for the 
supremacy; this form of the conflict, however, not coming into full 
play till after the reputed fall of the Western empire, A. D. 476. 
These three great forms of conflict had their wars, battles, truces, 
treaties. There are also minor forms of conflict which do not 
come under these categories, such, for example, as the civil 
wars, and such as were fought out within the pale of the church 
itself. 

The Roman empire, as we already know, was a development 
from small beginnings; and its additions were secured by over- 
coming. Continual conquest from generation to generation 



2o6 ROMAN HISTORY— THE EMPIRE. \Chap. XVL 

developed a national habit of mind, till Romans were born 
with the penchant and power of conquest. It had become 
a faculty of the mind — " second nature," at any rate. This drift 
of tendency continued to produce its legitimate results till the 
Roman empire reached its utmost possible limits ; that is, until 
the boundaries of the empire became so far removed from the 
central source of energy that the pressure from without could no 
longer be overcome, and an equilibrium resulted from the antag- 
onism between the internal and external forces. Notwithstand- 
ing the incoherence within and the pressure from without, the 
integrity of the frontier was for some time maintained. All the 
numerous attacks made by the Goths, Franks, Germans, during 
the third and fourth centuries and previously, were for the most 
part successfully repelled, and when not, resulted in no serious 
detriment to the empire. But in the fifth century the result was 
different. The Goths under Alaric, the Huns under Attila, the 
Vandals under Genseric, successively overran and ravaged the 
empire. The Goths, and after them the Vandals (Teuton races), 
took and plundered the city of Rome, after which time the prov- 
inces constituting the Western empire were subject to the devas- 
tations of armed hosts of uncultured peoples, who contended 
with one another for the substance of Roman citizens. The 
catastrophe was precipitated by the compound pressure which 
was brought to bear from without. Peoples were driving peoples 
against the empire. The base of support extended even to the 
eastern shore of Asia, and the aggressive forces accumulated on 
the border till the tension of resistance was broken, and the 
deluge of barbarians poured into the empire and over it. "The 
vast field of the Roman empire stood open for younger and 
more energetic nations to march in and take possession. And 
in the course of the fifth century, in all the Latin provinces 
of the empire, in Gaul, in Spain, in Africa, in Italy itself, the 
Teutonic nations did march in and take possession." — (Free- 
man.) This process was the reverse of that which prevailed 
when Romans marched into other nations and subdued them. 
In this great empire as in every political organization, great or 



Sec. 121.] MORAL WEAKNESS WITHIN. 207 

small, we have the play of two sets of counter forces — one which 
produces territorial growth, and the other which arrests it. It 
matters not what the causes of growth were, or what the causes 
of arrest were, the general fact still exemplifies the antagonism 
between two great classes of political forces. Those causes are 
not vague and metaphysical, but definite and tangible. As we 
have endeavored to point out, there were adequate causes for 
the development of Roman power; so were there adequate 
counter causes for the arrest of that development, for its 
gradual decline, and its final extinction. These minor causes, 
which co-operated to one end, the downfall of Rome, were 
not all developed outside of the Roman world, but mainly 
within it. 

Section 121. — The civil wars growing mostly out of rival 
claims to the throne were a chronic disorder which greatly 
afflicted the empire during its decline. A single generation 
sometimes witnessed several of these demoralizing conflicts, as 
during the reigns of Constantine and his sons. It was the moral 
stamina of the government even more than its physical power 
that suffered from this civil discordance. Losses of men and 
property are soon recovered while there is life and energy among 
the people. "Gold and silver may be consumed; but virtue, 
constancy, force and poverty are inexhaustible." — (Montes- 
quieu). Wealth and numbers count little for national great- 
ness unless the people from generation to generation are 
animated by a steady purpose, which in spite of temporary 
reverses, persists till it carries its end. It was this persistency 
of purpose and elasticity of vigor which recovered from defeat 
and changed reverses into success, as in the wars with Carthage 
and with Pyrrhus, that had so much to do with establishing 
the greatness of Rome; and it was the corrupt relaxation of this 
constancy of purpose that had so much to do with the fall of 
the empire. The national character had become debauched 
and weakened. For want of the necessary sustained tension of 
mind there could be neither conquest nor successful defense. 



2o8 ROMAN HISTORY — THE EMPIRE. [Chap. XVI. 

Rome declined because the old Roman stock had become 
depraved through the surfeit of power and wealth, and because 
new peoples had come to take their place, who knew little of, 
and cared nothing for, the old religion, and who were not 
inspired by the old traditions of Rome. 

Section 122. — The causes of decline are obvious enough. 
They are always to be found in company with the long-continued 
possession of power, and the over-plenty which power may com- 
mand without paying its price in industry. Emulation in virtue 
may create power and command abundance ; but rivalry in luxu- 
rious display which this abundance makes possible, will corrupt, 
enervate, and at last destroy all moral energy. The good so 
incompatible with this crassness of vanity will not abide in its 
presence. 

Right here a point may be made, by no means new, but vital 
in what aims to be the philosophy of this book. The repugnance 
to simplicity, self-denial, and rigid discipline is compensated 
by the vigor they give and the success they insure. On the 
other hand, the attempt to make the most of life by continual 
indulgence results at last in the penalties of exhaustion, weak- 
ness, and disaster. The way for a high character to make the 
most of life, is to practice the unselfish virtues of life. We 
cannot have both self-indulgence and real greatness. It is only 
by heroic conflict with the enemies to be overcome that one 
may earn title to the glory of a triumph. Life is a continued 
series of contests in which nerve and steadiness of purpose are 
indispensable to success. There is a radical antagonism in the 
constitution of things, the penalty of which life must pay. Sun- 
shine is not perpetual ; it must alternate with cloud and storm. 
It is no groundless whim of superstition that with a paradise 
there must needs be a purgatory. The evil must be endured 
that the good may be enjoyed. This is even more true of 
empires and nations than of individual men. 

Section 123. — But Rome forgot the price of excellence, as 
all great nations do in time. Prosperity came as the reward of 
stern virtues; and the old stock of Romans weakened and 



See. I2J.] THE TENDENCY TO DISINTEGRATION. 209 

declined for misusing the privileges of their good fortune. And 
as the moral stamina of the Roman stock declined, the infirmities 
inherent in the constitution of the empire made themselves felt 
for evil more and more. The nationality of the empire was 
never a unit; it was a combination of nationalities bound to- 
gether by an arbitrary power with its centre at Rome. The 
numerous nations of the empire might, indeed, be proud of the 
name Roman, as long as success and glory attended it, and as 
long as the power which bore it contributed to the general wel- 
fare of the people. But the administration covered so large an 
extent of territory, and embraced within its jurisdiction such a 
variety of peoples and interests, that its purity could not well be 
maintained. The government of a province for selfish ends and 
burthening it with a weight of taxes which was equivalent to 
robbery would eventually estrange the feelings of the people, 
and they would come to care little who their rulers were, whether 
Romans or barbarians. And this is just the state of things 
which at length came about. A new religion had invaded the 
empire successfully, and had come to stay even more surely than 
its physical invaders. In the West the ruling class adhered to 
the old religion while the people took to the new, and thus was 
the house divided against itself. There was discordance of sym- 
pathy and no hearty, united action. The government, the 
aristocracy, the people formed alliances with armed bands within 
the empire to promote their class interests. The invader had 
easy work to force an entrance, and no great trouble to hold 
what was gained. In the eastern empire there was more una- 
nimity of feeling, and a more determined front was presented to 
the invaders. Rome succumbed more from her own weakness 
than from the strength of her enemies. "If any national feel- 
ing, or common political interest had connected the people, the 
army, and the sovereign, the Roman empire would have easily 
repulsed the attacks of all its enemies; nay, had the government 
not arrested the natural progress of its subjects by vicious legis- 
lation and corrupt administration, the barbarous inhabitants of 
Germany, Poland, and Russia, could no more have resisted the 



2IO ROMAN HISTORY — THE EMPIRE. \CllCtp. XVI. 

force of Roman civilization than those of Spain, Gaul, and 
Britain. But this task required to be supported by the energy of 
national feeling; it was far beyond the strength of the imperial, 
or any other central government." — (George Finlay, Greeks 
under the Romans, 105). 

Such had been the extent of national demoralization that 
Rome was sometimes invaded by foreigners under the command 
of Romans, while the last defenders of the empire were not 
Romans but foreigners. Bad administration had paralyzed the 
industries, and those who cultivated the soil could not be spared 
to defend it. People who could pay taxes, must not become 
soldiers. Hence the army was made up of slaves, foreigners, 
and the lowest classes of the people ; and it became the policy 
of the emperors to prevent all sympathy between the army and 
the people. But the fatal end and the long, painful road to it, 
proved that the arbitrary bond without the sympathetic ties of 
empire are not sufficient. If it had been, the perfect machinery 
of -centralized government established by Constantine, would 
have perpetuated the empire forever. 

Section 124. — In the later stages of decline Rome no doubt 
suffered from the prevalence of a religion which had not been 
identified with the rise and progress of Roman power, and 
which more than any other religion professed to despise the 
things of this world. The persecutions which the Christians 
suffered at the hands of pagan rulers must have greatly strength- 
ened the tendency of the Christian mind to contemn the good 
things of this life for the better things which belong to the next. 
While this discipline gave vigor in certain directions, it did so, 
no doubt, at the expense of vigor in other directions. The 
austerity of character it was calculated to develop would have 
been favorable to great national results, if great national pur- 
poses had seized upon and united the public mind. But the 
discipline in question was incompatible with such national pur- 
poses, and whatever strength of character it may have given, 
was expended upon other aims. It had reference to personal 
interests rather than to affairs of State. It confederated people 



Sec. 124.] THEOLOGICAL DISPUTATION. 211 

in open hostility to some of the prevailing political maxims; and 
patriotism was not one of the virtues it cared to strengthen. 

That great current of feeling which magnified the next life at 
the expense of this, led directly and legitimately to all-engross- 
ing disputes about doctrinal points upon which it was supposed 
the integrity of religion depended; and out of these disputes 
grew mutual persecution by the sects of Christendom, with 
bloodshed and the diversion of energy from the vigor and integ- 
rity of empire. This mutual persecution did not begin till 
paganism was well out of the way, and political power had fallen 
into Christian hands. The conflict between the two great 
religions had first to cease before the conflict of hostile sects 
within the Christian church could begin. Here, for the first 
time in Roman history, came into full view the signs of unmis- 
takable degradation by the loss of the secular spirit, and the 
fatal encroachments of the theological. This was true, not of 
one class, but of all, so entangling the masses of the people as 
to unfit them for those successes without which religion itself 
has no redeeming power in a national sense. 

The schism of the Donatists with variable fortune divided the 
Church in Africa for three hundred years, and only ceased with 
the existence of African Christianity, which succumbed to 
Mohammedan power. Almost concurrent with the rise of the 
Donatists, and nearly a hundred years before the capture of 
Rome by the Goths, the Arian controversy arose to distract the 
Christian world. Emperors, prelates, laymen, councils were 
zealous in determining the exact truth, and in punishing such as 
would not receive it. The minds of men were directed to nice 
distinctions concerning the relations of the Son to the Father 
which no mind ever could or ever will understand. But it was 
none the less effective to excite disputes and stir up the angry 
passions of the disputants to end in mutual persecution, which 
according to contemporary witnesses was worse than the fury of 
savage beasts and equal to the discord of hell itself. After 
nearly five hundred years of profitless dissension, the Catholic 
creed which conformed to the decision of the Council of Nice 



212 ROMAN HISTORY — THE EMPIRE. [Chap. XVI. 

in favor of Homoousian, or the consubstantiality of the Father 
and Son, whatever that may mean, completely triumphed over 
the heresy of Arianism. 

When the dissensions concerning the Trinity had been in 
vogue for a century, disputes about the incarnation of Christ 
were superadded, and continued to distract the Christian world 
for two and a half centuries. As the subject was one about 
which the disputants could know nothing, it afforded a well- 
appreciated opportunity for the display of pious zeal and dialec- 
tic skill; and every possible change which mental ingenuity could 
devise was rung on the doctrine of the incarnation and the 
nature or natures of Christ. Whatever was imagined as true 
became, through the necessity of its defense, of great importance 
to those who espoused it; and if strong enough they evinced 
their brotherly interest in others by compelling them to believe 
in like manner. The dispute led at length to the first religious 
war which Christians fought with each other, and thousands 
perished in this contest about a theological phantom. 

The contest about the worship of images lasted for one hun- 
dred and fifty years and was actively engaged in by popes, 
emperors, and empresses. No less than eight councils were 
called to decree the truth on this subject. The decrees were 
both for and against as usual in cases of difference, recognizing 
or condemning the various shades of use and abuse which 
might be made of images. In this contest the spiritual power 
of the bishops of Rome came in contact with the temporal 
power of the emperors in the East. The spiritual dignitaries 
who supported the worship of images prevailed in the end over 
the temporal sovereigns who contended for the more spiritual 
forms of worship; and while the idolatry held its ground in the 
West, it came at length to prevail in the East. 

We have here an example of the triumph of the ecclesiastical 
over the secular power. Pope Gregory II. had not failed rightly 
to estimate his strength when he hurled defiance at Leo the 
iconoclast. The discipline to which Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, 
in an earlier age had subjected an empress and an emperor was 



Sec. 725.] THE CONTESTS OF THE LIVERIES. 2 1 3 

a fitting prelude to what was afterwards to come in greater ful- 
ness. When the Roman empire was no more, there were other 
kings and emperors in the West to subordinate, and faithfully 
did the popes labor to this end. This was a long, long struggle, 
in which the general prevalence of ignorance and the supersti- 
tion of the masses at length enabled the ecclesiastical power to 
assume and administer paramount authority in secular affairs. 

The Paulicians arose in the seventh century and became a 
numerous sect in the East. They were persecuted by the Greek 
emperors, and Theodora, who had finally restored the worship of 
images in the eastern church, was bent on the extermination of 
the Paulicians. They were hunted down and many of them put 
to death. In desperation they took up arms, and uniting with 
the Saracens they endangered the very throne of the persecut- 
ing emperor; but they were at length successfully resisted, and 
afterwards became a moral rather than a military power. As 
such, subject to the inevitable changes of the centuries, they 
survived as an element which contributed to bring about the 
Reformation. 

Section 125. — The factious hostility of the partisans of the 
several colors worn by the charioteers at the Roman games shows 
the facility with which mankind manage to get into conflict with 
one another. The government being autocratic, there was little 
place for continuous political partisanship; but since the pres- 
sure in human nature for a fight is so urgent, hostile factions 
were organized on the distinction of liveries in the circus. 
Many emperors of Rome took sides, and made the wrangle a 
matter of dignified interest. The contest was at length trans- 
ferred with increased fury from Rome to Constantinople. Dur- 
ing the reign of Justinian and Theodora, the hostility of the 
factions broke out in sedition, and blood flowed abundantly in 
the streets of the city. Justinian favored the blues, and the 
greens created an emperor to champion their cause. The throne 
of Justinian was in danger; and even after the greens had been 
beaten, the factions again revived their animosities to distract 
the capital city, and disturb the peace of the empire. There 



214 ROMAN HISTORY — THE EMPIRE. \Chap. XVI. 

were emperors so weak, and the factions so strong, that the 
former courted the latter as the chief support of the throne. 

Section 126. — All these conflicts betrayed the demoralization 
of the Eastern empire, while they helped still further to develop 
its weakness. The East had not escaped the onset from without 
which proved so disastrous in the West. Large outlay and con- 
stant watchfulness had been necessary to keep the Persians at 
bay; the Crusaders had taken possession of Constantinople and 
dethroned the sovereigns; the Huns had invaded the empire; 
the Goths had overrun Greece in the third century, and Alaric 
had been in Athens before he pillaged Rome. The limits of the 
empire had been fatally driven in by one conqueror after another 
till it was without provinces. Constantinople was not capable 
of offering a manly resistance to the Turks under Mahomet II., 
and the city fell into Moslem hands; and with its fall the empire 
of the East was at an end. 

Section 127. — The fact has been mentioned that Rome 
began under one religion and ended under another. In the first 
the religious forms had reference mainly to the affairs of this 
life with little regard to the next. Religion was made sub- 
servient to present and secular interests. In the system under 
which Roman power came to an end, faith and the priests had 
subordinated secular interests to the theological. The mind was 
diverted from the pursuit of great temporal ends, and this con- 
spired with the political infirmities of the empire which already 
favored disintegration, to antagonize the interest in empire by a 
merely local interest in municipal rule. The contest between 
these two forms of interest was going on, silent and unsuspected 
during the decline of the empire, the general interest losing 
ground, and the local interest gaining, till it came about at last, 
that the parts which had been bound together as an empire, fell 
into municipal fragments with no common interest in one 
another. What, from Augustus on, had been for centuries an 
empire of cities and provinces, was at last dissolved into its 
component parts, and there was left no empire, but only cities 
and provinces. And what is worthy of note as something more 



Sec. 128.1 DEEP-SEATED DETERIORATION. 215 

than a coincidence, is that after the Roman power became 
Christian the dignitaries of the church gradually obtained con- 
trol of the municipal governments, and with their own interest 
and the interest of their people, in doctrinal disputes, there must 
needs be less of interest in the general welfare of the empire 
with consequent tendency to weakness and dissolution. The 
Roman empire had no doubt facilitated the spread of the Chris- 
tian religion, but when this religion became degenerate through 
its petty disputes and the possession of power, it hastened 
rather than stayed the decline of the empire. But in all this 
the Christian system was but the victim of still deeper elements 
of deterioration which were slowly but surely eating away the 
vitality of the political organism. The appointment of incom- 
petent favorites to places of trust and honor; administration to 
please the sovereign, which oppressed the people; wrong inflicted 
in the name of justice; legalized monopoly in manufacture and 
trade; the protection of privileges; fiscal exactions ruining 
agriculture and discouraging industry; — the stream of govern- 
ment could not rise above its source, and there was no power 
on earth that could arrest the downward tendency. 

History shows that among all peoples not crystallized in per- 
manent forms, political power is rhythmic in its manifestations, 
and however great at one time any particular form of it may 
be, it is sure to fall into decline, if not by one set of causes, 
then certainly by another. "As a rule, the influences which 
have accelerated a nation's progress and brought it to the apogee 
of its social existence, end in precipitating its ruin by their fur- 
ther action. Every direction which humanity takes has almost 
always something of evil in it, is limited in its very nature, and 
cannot stand its extremest consequences. All earthly existence 
bears in itself, from the first, the germs of its decay." — (Roscher, 
Political Economy, Vol. II.) The Roman power is perhaps 
the grandest exhibition yet given in history of the operation of 
this law. 

Section 128. — In all this sea of conflict amidst which the 
Roman empire declined and ended, are there not to be found 



2l6 ROMAN HISTORY — THE EMPIRE. \Chap. XVI. 

germs of a new birth? Without these conflicts there could have 
been no new birth — none of this modern civilization of which 
we are so proud. A people left to itself has no innate force 
necessitating development out of an inferior into a superior con- 
dition of society. The endogenous development of which 
Emerson speaks is true neither of individuals nor of nations. 
Nations, like individuals, must be jogged out of routine, else 
they would forever run in the same rut. Dr. Whateley and the 
Duke of Argyll are right in their views that no people ever 
raised itself unaided from the savage state. Peoples only rise 
by conflict with peoples bred under different conditions of life, 
and they only take polish by rubbing against one another. 
Thought can only assume renewed energy by mental contact. 
There was no lack of those disturbing forces so necessary to the 
breaking of routine throughout Europe during the period which 
intervened between the close of the old civilization and the rise 
of the new. No adequate picture can be drawn of the ming- 
ling and contact of peoples by immigration and war during this 
period. Successive waves of Huns, Alani, Bulgarians, and 
other Scythian races; numerous families of Sclavonians; devas- 
tating hordes of Germans, — Gepidse, Goths, Vandals, Heruli, 
Burgundians, Lombards, Franks, Suevi, Angli, Saxons; the war- 
like followers of Mahomet, — Turks, Saracens, Moors; — all these 
with the Romans and natives turned Europe into a common drill- 
ground, marched, counter-marched, and fought. Not a province 
but was repeatedly overrun; and permanent settlements were 
made in many parts of the empire. Gibbon observes: "At this dis- 
astrous era of the ninth and tenth centuries, Europe was afflicted 
by a triple scourge from the North, the East, and the South : 
the Normans, the Hungarians, and the Saracens sometimes trod 
the same ground of desolation; and these savage foes might 
have been compared by Homer to the two lions growling over 
the carcass of a mangled stag." The Saracens, Moors, Franks, 
and natives contending in Spain; France fought over again and 
again, and Goths, Burgundians, and Franks permanently super- 
imposed on the Gallic population ; the Latins, Greeks, Saracens 



Sec. 128.'] ORIGIN OF THE NEW ORDER. 217 

Goths, Huns, Vandals, Lombards, in a bewildering maze of hos- 
tility in Italy, and Rome kicked by fortune like a foot-ball from 
one conqueror to another; — this made Europe and the centuries 
active but sorrowful. Add to this the excitement and sacrifice 
of the crusades, and the contact and acquaintance through them 
of the East and the West, enlarging men's ideas and giving new 
direction to human energy; and then the struggle between the 
spiritual and temporal powers, the passionate discussion of 
intractable questions in theology and the bloody contests from the 
same; the contact of creeds and religions and the succumbing of 
one to another; the meeting and coalition of peoples of unlike 
manners and their efficacy for mutual modification; the change 
of commercial centers and the rise of commercial cities; the 
advance of Arabian science from the West, and of Greek litera- 
ture and philosophy from the East, meeting in favorable centers 
and generating a new intellectual career for the whole western 
world; — there was indeed a bewildering complication of disturb- 
ing forces both for good and for evil. 

Progress takes place by the continual complication of results, 
and this is facilitated, first, by opening up the channels of com- 
munication between peoples along which the forces of action and 
reaction may play; and secondly, by the remembrance of events 
and results which teach by resemblance and contrast, and enable 
each succeeding age to avail itself of a large variety of experi- 
ences. Such use is not always made by any means ; but 
even during what is called decline, experiences are accu- 
mulated to be made available in the subsequent renewal 
of upward tendencies. It is to this complication of util- 
ized experiences that our civilization largely owes its superi- 
ority. Greek civilization was a far greater prodigy than our own; 
little is known of its foreground. The renewed activity of the 
civilizing elements after the northern barbarians had covered 
Europe with ignorance and with certain forms of degradation, 
was greatly facilitated by what remained on record of the Greek, 
Roman, and Eastern civilizations. The contact of peoples had 
weeded out the physically degenerate, and the intermingling and 



2l8 EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. {Chap. XVII. 

intermarriage of peoples had broken up the uniformity and per- 
manence of race-characters, and had overturned or modified 
long-standing customs and habits, thus preparing conditions for 
a new development of psychical, social, and political forms. 
Much that contributed to the downfall of the old, contributed 
also to the building up of the new. It would be a study of 
interest, though one of labor and difficulty, to trace the lines of 
conflict which lead up from the closed battles of the past to the 
new battles and the new triumphs of existing civilization. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 

Section 129. — The known history of Britain begins with the 
descent of Julius Caesar on the island. Late in the first century 
of our era most of it was brought into subjection by the Roman 
legions under Julius Agricola. Roman civilization went with 
Roman rule, and Britain had cities, roads, industries, com- 
merce. A change came over the great empire. She lost not 
only the power of conquering and civilizing new provinces, but 
even the power of protecting Italy against the inroads of bar- 
barians, and the provinces were left to take care of them- 
selves. The Britons had been for over four centuries a subject 
people, and had lost the habit of self-defense, so that when they 
were hard-pressed by wild and warlike neighbors, they appealed 
for aid to some German pirates who were cruising off their coast, 
and who went by the name of Englishmen. The new allies 
became the worst of enemies, and turning their arms against 
their employers, exterminated them, and with them their laws, 
manners, and religion. It took more than one hundred and 



Sec. I2g.\ EARLY STRUGGLES FOR POWER. 219 

fifty years to do this; but it was done thoroughly. Paganism 
and barbarism prevailed instead of Christianity and Roman 
civilization. 

No sooner, however, had the English secured several provinces 
in Britain than they turned their arms against one another. 
■ They disputed in bloody encounters for the over-lordship; as the 
Greeks before them, and the Latins in earlier times disputed for 
the hegemony. In this struggle, as in all such, as one went 
up others came down. Armies were sometimes annihilated, 
and provinces sometimes swallowed up by another. Deira and 
Bernicia, long enemies, were united under one government and 
called Northumbria. Here was the nucleus of a power which 
grew apace and assumed the headship of the English tribes in 
a sort of provisional unity. 

Missionaries from Rome and Ireland turned some of these 
pagan tribes into Christians; and the contest of religion assumed 
various forms. The Christian powers invaded the pagan. The 
princes and provinces of the contending religions made war on 
each other with a blending of political and religious motives. 
The Irish and Italian bishops contended for supremacy in eccle- 
siastical government, the latter winning it. Relations between 
the island and the continent became established by the ties of 
religion. 

During the century of the Northumbrian ascendency the 
Christian religion was established and crude beginnings were 
made in learning and literature. The seat of political power 
began now to drift to the southward. When Northumbria fell, 
Mercia, lying immediately to the south of it, and in the center 
of what is now England, rose into power under Effa, and for 
awhile held the over-lordship of these petty English provinces. 
And when in the course of this perpetual struggle the power of 
Mercia waned, Sussex, the southernmost province of the island, 
pushed its way to the head under Egbert, whose sway was so 
extensive that he styled himself the " King of the English." 
But the English were not allowed to have a monopoly of the 
contests for power in Britain. The Franks had already made 



2 20 EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. \Chap. XVII. 

themselves felt; and now the Danes threw themselves upon the 
island with a will to win. They gained a foothold in Northum- 
bria, in Mercia, in East Anglia, and it was with difficulty that 
Sussex, under its vigorous kings, was for a time able to main- 
tain its integrity. But when the English to the north of it united 
with the invaders Sussex too went down, and the Danes, under 
Sweger, were masters of England. 

Section 130. — These things stand out conspicuous in his- 
tory ; there are others which are more obscure, and others still 
which would not bear record of any kind, all of which rendered 
primitive England the field of discord and conflict as the only 
practical means to better things. The feuds of the rude families 
and tribes, private redress of wrong, trials by battle, the super- 
seding of the hereditary nobles by the thanes, or war compan- 
ions of the king, the sinking of freemen into slavery for debt or 
crime, the passing of the peasant-freeman into villanage, giving 
up. his land to another for protection amidst the ruthless con- 
flicts which everywhere raged without ceasing; — and so English 
history took its course along the channel of least resistance. 
This was illustrated when pirates annihilated the Briton, and 
then when they fought with each other for the upper hand, and 
afterward when other pirates invaded the island and gained the 
mastery. By a selection which was determined on a thorough 
trial of strength, the most persistently aggressive prevailed and 
took the first of all things. 

After the Dane came the Norman, and he, too, subjected 
England and ruled it. After the Normans came the Angevins — 
the Dukes of Anjou; and they gave to England its sovereigns 
who contended with the native spirit of liberty. They were bad 
kings who did a great deal of good for English liberty by failing 
in their struggle to overcome it. 

Whatever the form of political unity, it has alway come about 
by a crushing process. It was so in England. The peasant-free- 
man had been subordinated to the English lord or thane; this lord 
in turn was pushed from his place by the Norman baron, and the 
baron was subordinated to the king. There was unity by the 



Sec. IJO.] THE CHARTER OF ENGLISH LIBERTY. 221 

strong chain of obligation for service on feudal conditions from 
the lower to the higher. It was to bind together and give 
strength for self-protection. But the scale of dependence thus 
established could not be maintained. The rise of new classes 
in society by the changes which commerce and thrift were bring- 
ing about, brought on new struggles which culminated in the 
charter of English liberty. When the English people had 
achieved a fair measure of both unity and freedom, it is to be 
reckoned as the outcome and reward of persistent struggle. 

This conflict was a very complicated one. The king wanted 
to be absolute; the barons wanted supreme control within their 
own domains to rob or make war as their greed or ambition led 
them; the church wanted ecclesiastical control with a large 
measure of interference in secular affairs, and it was a subject of 
contention whether Rome or the church authorities in England 
should exercise these prerogatives ; the middle classes in town 
and country wanted as much liberty as they could get; and the 
king was the one great power to be dreaded by all who valued 
their liberty. He used one class against another to secure the 
field for his absolute will. Sometimes the church, sometimes 
the barons were the champions of general freedom, till at last, 
all classes united against the king and the pope, and the barons 
with an army at their back compelled King John to grant the 
charter of liberty to the English people. But this turned out to 
be theoretical rather than practical, liberty on paper rather than 
in life, and it was only after generations of contest with sover- 
eigns who disregarded its provisions that it acquired legal force 
and practical value. The more than thirty confirmations it 
received from time to time, show what persistency of effort was 
necessary to give efficacy to Magna Charta. 
n 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 

Section 131. — It is trite to say that mankind under like 
circumstances of culture and surroundings will work out, not 
only like systems of opinion, but like systems of society. Like, 
we may say; but not identical. A man may begin life full of 
superstition, which he lays aside in the vigor of manhood, only 
to resume it when he becomes old; but the superstition of 
juvenility and of senility may be, and are apt to be, very differ- 
ent in character. One's antecedents at any period of life 
are part of the circumstances which influence faith and opinion, 
and they tell in results when after long years one returns, with 
an old man's fondness, to early impressions. 

It is trite also, to say that a human propensity, like the con- 
jugal, say, will shape its manifestations under different circum- 
stances and among different peoples, in a variety of apparently 
incompatible and contradictory systems, — but systems they will 
be, however diverse. These two principles, that diverse systems 
spring from the same propensity, and that similar systems spring 
up among diverse peoples under similar circumstances, act 
together to produce the phenomena of social and political 
institutions. 

The mystery of the feudal system disappears, perhaps, when 
we consider the circumstances under which society was molded 
into this form, and the fact that the system itself was essentially 
the reproduction on a grand scale of the patriarchal system. In 
the patriarchal family the ties were primarily those of nature, sup- 
plemented by adoption ; the obligations grew out of the relation 
of parent and child, and the alliance thus formed was offensive 
and defensive. If danger had not threatened on every side, the 



SeC. IJI.] FEUDALISM MODIFIED PATRIARCHALISM. 223 

obligations of the inferior to the superior would have set far 
more loosely than they did, and the sympathy of the mutual 
relation would have been far weaker than it was. Every society 
is a congeries of balanced opposites, without the balance being 
at all complete ; and the higher the form of society, the greater 
is the complication of this congeries. In primitive societies, 
clans, tribes, petty states may be regarded as opposed unities in 
constantly active resistance against one another. The patri- 
archal is a primitive form of society, and only exists under prim- 
itive conditions, when men are comparatively wild and given far 
more to violence and disorder than to gentleness and order. 
Such were the times and the people under the rise of the feudal 
system. After the empire of Charlemagne fell to pieces, violence 
and anarchy reigned everywhere. Men were rude and aggres- 
sive; the feeble were, without exception, the prey of the strong, 
and the red hand of disorder and violence, directed by personal 
self-seeking, struck through society wherever it was weakest. 
There was no strong arm to bring order out of this chaos. 
There was no common bond between men, and they appeared 
not only to have lost the habit and power, but even the remem- 
brance of government. Upon the reversion of society to a 
state of barbansm, the reversion to social forms appropriate to 
that state comes along naturally enough in the order of historical 
sequences. Men had to do something to protect themselves 
against the disorderly violence of one another. The weak allied 
themselves with the more powerful who were nearest at hand to 
make common cause against aggression. They formed a feudal 
family, in which the weaker members became theoretically and 
practically obedient children to their superiors. If any were 
owners of land they made it over to the lord and received it 
back by feudal tenure pledging therefor personal fealty and 
service in arms. The combination was not formed on the basis 
of blood relationship, by nature or fiction, for that could not be, 
but on the pledge of mutual good offices. "The lord and his 
vassals, during the ninth and tenth centuries, may be considered 
as a patriarchal household, recruited, not as in primitive times 



2 24 THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. [Chap. XVIII. 

by adoption, but by infeudation." — (Maine. Ancient Law, 229.) 
The antecedents of the patriarchal, and of the feudal families 
were unlike as to the possibilities of possession and kinship, and 
to this cause is due mainly the difference between them. Never- 
theless was feudalism a modified form of patriarchalism; and it 
came into existence from the very obviousness of its practical 
utility. It took form under the pressure of great need, and the 
direction of movement was determined by the composition of 
forces. The system may be regarded as the juvenility of the 
new civilization, as patriarchalism was the juvenility of the old. 

But while the feudal system grew out of a violent and dis- 
orderly state of society, it served by its very nature to perpetuate 
violence and disorder, though in a modified form. Every thing 
about it betokened the universal prevalence of petty warfare. 
The towns were walled and every house was a castle. The great 
barons made war on one another for revenge and plunder. The 
right of private war was a most precious right which no one 
could think of giving up. Lords sallied from their castles to 
rob merchants on the highway. Bishops even, forgetful of their 
peaceful profession, entered the lists of strife, and did not hes- 
itate, robber fashion, to prey upon the weak. 

Section 132. — During the feudal ages it became a question 
to whom the vassal owed allegiance in case of conflict between 
his lord and the king. It is probable that when society was 
most completely shattered to pieces, little was thought of obliga- 
tion to any one beyond the inferior lord to whom fealty had 
been formally pledged. When the feudal system had passed 
into decline, and the king had acquired larger recognition, it was 
held that the vassal owed allegiance first of all to his sovereign. 
As history repeats itself, so we find this question of conflicting 
loyalty to be quite like that which distracted the politics of our 
own country before and during the late civil war. If it had not 
been decided by the war, we may be sure that, with the broader 
views which an advanced civilization fosters as well as demands, 
the high claims in behalf of loyalty to the state as against loyalty 
to the nation, would have died out like witchcraft or the feudal 



SeC. IJJ, .] GROWING INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE. 225 

relation, on account of its sheer unfitness longer to survive. 
But as a sequel to the extinction of this extreme form of the 
minor loyalty, a struggle has become necessary to maintain for 
local self-government its proper weight in the balancing of state 
and national powers. This struggle now going on is quite like 
that which followed the feudal system, when it became necessary 
in the interest of freedom, for the minor powers of the realm to 
resist the encroachments of the central authority. 

Section 133. — What caused the decline of the feudal sys- 
tem? The development of industry and commerce. Thriving 
cities emerged into existence and fostered a spirit which was 
entirely at variance with the conditions of society under feudal- 
ism. The exchange of products requires peace, and not a 
universal system of brigandage. But cities came up only 
through much tribulation, being the arenas of many-sided con- 
flict. With the development of wealth, new classes arose; and 
with the rise of classes began the war of classes. There would 
be a contest between the civil and ecclesiastical powers, and the 
bishop must be reduced before there could be independent 
secular government at all. Then the powerful families would 
compete with each other for the upper hand ; and meanwhile 
the industrial classes growing into consciousness of power would 
enter the lists with the oligarchy for a share in governing. 

There could not be order in society without political organi- 
zation with a head; and this head was in those days the king. 
As he rose to power the fragments of society became more 
united in the general interest of all. The king had to overcome 
the separate supremacy of the cities, of the barons, of the great 
bishops, and to effect this, he often set up one against another; 
and in the midst of this contest between the king and his 
inferiors, the legislative power assumed a more distinctive form. 
And then when the wealth and the growing sense of liberty 
created a plebeian class, which was formidable in its demands for 
rights, the king would instinctively turn to the hereditary nobles 
as his most natural allies for sympathy and help in making resist- 
ance. But the alliances of this many-sided conflict were 



226 THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. \Chap. XVIII. 

supremely capricious; they were leagues of interest readily 
formed and readily broken, and the friends of one brief period 
were often the enemies of the next. Nevertheless, it all worked 
steadily to one end, the better organization and gradual improve- 
ment of society. 

During the period of feudalism there were no ready facilities 
of inter-communication between places; bad roads favored the 
system by the isolation of petty sovereignties; but with the rise of 
cities, industries and commerce, there was an improvement in 
the facilities of travel and transportation which favored the effort 
of kings to extend their sovereignty over more distant territory. 
The invention of cannon and the use of hireling troops gave 
strength to the central power and assisted in establishing and 
maintaining order; and thus the feudal system came to an end. 
The central authority served very great uses in being strong; 
the despotism which only too often resulted was an abuse which 
under the circumstances was unavoidable. Thus the good and 
evil go in pairs, and it is only a short step from one to the other. 
Without a strong central authority, the good could not have 
been had in those stormy times; with such strong central 
authority, the absolutism of kings could not always be prevented. 
It was in these contests with absolutism that legislative bodies 
came to a consciousness of their power, — also, to become at 
times the instruments of grave abuses. Freeman, the historian, 
has well said that almost every political question is a balance of 
evils, and "that no kind of government worthy to be called gov- 
ernment is universally good or bad in itself." — (Essays, Vol. I., 

399. 4o5)- 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM UNDER CONTACT WITH OTHER SYSTEMS. 

Secton 134. — With Judaism: What may be called the sys- 
tem or framework of Christianity was Judaism with an elimi- 
nation and an addition. It left off the law and its complication 
of primitive observances, retaining only a part of current ordi- 
nances, and added the worship of Jesus with modification of the 
moral system. The doctrines of immortality, of the resurrection, 
of vicarious sacrifice, of baptism, of the mission of angels, of the 
devil, were already current among the Jews. Much of this had 
been adopted from the Persians. The Jewish system was a 
composite derived from the whole of Jewish experiences; and 
Christianity was destined by a clear law of historical causation 
to become more composite still. The cross had long been a 
religious symbol, and by the coincidence of the manner of Jesus' 
death, the Christians had only to apply the symbol of earthly life 
to the scheme of eternal life. Plato and his successors had pre- 
pared the logos or Word, which Jewish and gentile disciples 
applied to Jesus, and made a characteristic property of the 
Christian system. Most of the Jewish Christians wished to 
retain the exclusiveness of Christianity in consonance with their 
habit of exclusiveness as Jews. Paul and Barnabas, however, 
infused into the new system a more catholic spirit, and 
accepted converts, without circumcision. This was the point 
on which the Jewish and gentile Christians opposed each other; 
and the contest was not confined to Jerusalem and Palestine, 
but spread through the cities of Syria and Asia Minor where the 
Jews had synagogues and maintained their peculiar worship. 
At length the narrow spirit of Judaism was overcome and exor- 



2 28 CHRISTIANITY UNDER CONTACT. \Clldp. XIX. 

cised by the expanding force of the new movement which crys- 
tallized into a new system. But notwithstanding the inroads of 
Christian propagandism, Judaism maintained its integrity as a 
distinct religion; and between it and Christianity was maintained 
a feeling of animosity which at times broke out with painful bit- 
terness and cruelty, and which to this day has not been wholly 
quieted. 

Section 135. — With Paganism: In most great conflicts 
between Christianity and other religions, the former has taken 
on modifications even from the opposing religions which it had 
overcome and apparently exterminated. As unlike as Christian- 
ity and paganism were, as completely as the former appeared to 
have subjected the latter, yet was Christianity radically paganized 
for centuries. The movement gathered strength immediately 
after the legal substitution by Constantine of the Christian for 
the pagan system, and having almost completely adulterated the 
Church, lasted till the renewal of primitive spiritualism by the 
Protestant reformation. The religion of Jesus encountered 
paganism in two separate contests: first, in that with the religion 
of the Roman empire, and secondly, in that with the religions of 
the barbarians who overran the empire. The ignorant wor- 
shipers of Odin embraced Christianity with a facility which 
appears to be marvelous; but unfortunately, Christianity did 
not lift them up into its embrace so much as they drew it down 
into theirs. 

We speak of a religion as a sort of entity; but it is never 
fixed and uniform in character; and if it may be figuratively 
regarded as an "entity," it is protean to the last degree. What 
we know in history as religions are certain modes of belief with 
ritualistic forms ; and any individual (especially among the more 
cultured peoples) is liable to give a tinge of personal coloring 
to his religion. This tendency to a distinctive bias is still more 
true of races than of individuals. The barbarians who accepted 
Christianity could not throw off their old habits; at best they 
could only modify them. They were very fa* from confining 
their religious regard to the one true God which Christianity had 






Sec. 135.] WITH THE EASTERN RELIGIONS. 229 

adopted from the Semitic mind. The Father, the Son, the 
Virgin, saints, martyrs, and relics became objects of worship, 
and the Christian system was transformed into unmistakable 
polytheism. Not only this, but the virtues of the original gods 
were transferred to their images, and image-worship was for a 
long time general in the Christian church by authority. We 
can hardly realize that this polytheistic and image-worshiping 
system of religion was the same that grew up in Palestine and 
western Asia under the polytheistic repugnance and image- 
hating of the Semitic temper. The sacred names were retained, 
the rites and observances were intended to be Christian, but the 
distinctive spirit of Christianity, that which gave it its spiritual 
supremacy, was completely set aside. The vision of spiritual 
things was no doubt so dim, and the sense of future retribution 
so weak with the herd of worshipers that their religion was not 
master of the passions but their slave. 

Section 136. — With the Religions of the East: Christianity 
in its conflict with the Oriental religions suffered in a different 
way: It was not by subversion as in its contact with paganism; 
but by the rivalry of eclectic religions, which, though they 
created defection and discord, were yet unable to outbid the 
Christian system for the favor of the many. In the one case, 
it was insidious adulteration till practical polytheism superseded 
professed monotheism ; in the other, it was the obduracy of 
older religious doctrines which built themselves up as a wall 
against the further advance of Christian propagandism, and 
which enabled their devotees to make excursions into Christian 
territory and sallies into the Christian ranks, the effects of which 
have never since been entirely obliterated. Originally, the 
Christian system could not have been what it was but for the 
blending of Greek and Oriental influences in western Asia; and 
it afterwards became subject to additional modifications from 
the same quarter. The Oriental systems were more speculative, 
and resulted from a more elaborate activity of the intellectual 
faculties. They were more from the head and less from the 
heart. They belonged to older civilizations, and were, perhaps, 



230 CHRISTIANITY UNDER CONTACT. [Chap. XIX. 

a more matured product of the human mind. This view is con- 
firmed by the fact that the Christian civilizations are just now 
manifesting a decided tendency toward Eastern speculations, 
with such modifications as the more systematic scheme and 
wider range of modern knowledge make necessary. 

The doctrine of an original and insuperable antagonism in 
the constitution of things was a leading one in the Oriental sys- 
tems. Gnosticism first attempted to unite with Christian con- 
ceptions the Brahminical doctrine of an essential antagonism 
between mind and matter, the one pure and sinless, the other 
corrupt and malignant. In order to retain the divinity of Jesus 
this doctrine necessitated the etherealization of his body, and 
regarded him as an eon or emanation from the pure, primal 
spirit. From the execration of matter as the source of evil, 
arose the mortification of the flesh as the means of good. Mon- 
achism prevailed in the East, and by contagion as well as 
through the direct teachings of the Gnostics and Manicheans 
concerning the malignity of matter, it became an established 
feature of the Christian system. In bidding for blind religious 
veneration, especially in the East and in Europe in former 
times, asceticism counts high; and puritanism is the form 
which Protestants offer, as monasticism is the form which the 
Catholics retain. The essential animus of asceticism, what- 
ever its form, as well as the receptivity of personal temperament 
which assures to this repressive idiosyncrasy its value, largely 
a heritage from the East. It is believed to have arisen in Egypt, 
whence it spread into Syria and Palestine, and was introduced 
into the West by Athanasius (Trench). 

Manicheanism was a very complicated system, and drew freely 
from Oriental sources, and from the more recently elaborated 
system of Gnosticism. It recognized the eternal hostility of 
mind and matter with all the inferences and complications which 
the doctrine involves. It was its more especial function to 
unite with the Christian conceptions the particular feature of 
antagonism which is found in the Magian system of Persia — 
the contest of good and evil, of light and darkness, for the 



Sec. Jj6.] WITH MANICHEANISM. 23 1 

supremacy of the world. Manicheanism had elements of suc- 
cess in it, which Gnosticism had not, as the event of its spread 
throughout Christendom shows. Its followers cannot be regarded 
as at any time very numerous, but they exercised a disturbing 
influence at the centres of Christendom, and were thought to be 
worthy of persecution under the edicts of emperors. Their 
influence on the Christian system has never entirely died out. 

The Marcionites, an ancient sect scattered throughout a num- 
ber of countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe, held similar views 
of the antagonism between a principle of good and a principle 
of evil. Once a numerous sect with a greater leaven of ration- 
ality in its creed than was common, it became extinct in the 
sixth century. The Paulicians took up a part of the Manichean 
system, its dualism, its rejection of idols, and its etherealization 
of Jesus; and as exiles, they carried their doctrines through 
Europe. Long afterward, the Albigenses who had become 
numerous in central Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries, were persecuted for holding a modification of these 
tenets. The doctrines with such changes as time must bring 
revived in the Reformation, culminated in the theology of Calvin 
and the poetry of Milton, and entered authoritatively into the 
theology of Protestantism. The doctrine of election, by sepa- 
rating mankind into the children of light who are to be eternally 
blest, and the children of darkness who are to be eternally 
damned, enforced an exaggeration of cruelty not to be found in 
any of the kindred notions of the Magian and Manichean sys- 
tems. In every modern Christian "revival" or Christian's 
experience, the contest goes grimly on between the powers of 
good and evil, Christ at the head of the angelic hierarchy, and 
Satan at the head of the other, — it is Magianism, Manicheanism 
christianized and modernized. 

These few points in religious history have been here used to 
suggest how religious conflict may readily lead to the assimilation 
of new doctrines and the blending of hostile creeds. There is a 
contagion of faith, and one creed is liable to imbibe from another 
even in active conflict, as nations at war learn from each other. 



232 CHRISTIANITY UNDER CONTACT. [Chap. JCIX. 

Section 137. — With Mohammedanism: Mohammed united 
Arabia under one government, knocked the idols to pieces, and 
changed the religion of his country, — all in less than twenty 
years. No other man ever did so much in so short a time. The 
wonder is not that his followers regard him as an apostle or 
prophet, but that they do not worship him as a god. The 
prestige which Mohammedanism acquired under its founder, was 
not lost under his successors. Within a hundred years from the 
birth of Mohammedanism, it had taken possession of Persia, 
Syria, Egypt, Northern Africa, Spain. Notwithstanding its policy 
of toleration in the countries it conquered, it exterminated 
Magianism in Persia, and Christianity in Spain and Africa. 

The founders of Christianity and Mohammedanism were for 
the most part illiterate. Their systems were simple, evincing no 
such elaboration as the Oriental philosophico-religions. They 
appealed to the emotions rather than to the intellect. There is 
much that is common in those two great religious systems, with 
perhaps this difference that the Christian was more severe in its 
morality, while the Mohammedan more fully assured the integ- 
rity of monotheism. They both sprung from like sources; but 
while Mohammed wrought out his unaided, the early followers 
of Christ assisted greatly in molding Christianity into a system. 
The prophet had been to Jerusalem in his youth, and learned 
there of the one God and of the divine mission of Jesus. We 
are to believe that the ideas made a deep impression, and con- 
stituted the germ of what was soon to be a mighty religion. 
They wrought upon Mohammed's mind (said to be epileptic) 
till he became possessed with the illusion that, like Moses and 
Jesus, he too was a prophet. " There is one God and Moham- 
med is his apostle," became the cardinal doctrines of the new 
religion, which inculcated prayer, fasting, and alms, interdicted 
wine, gambling, and infanticide, and taught the doctrines of the 
resurrection, of hell, and of paradise. 

Perhaps the very likeness of the Christian and Mohammedan 
systems caused them so to repel that there could be no mutual 
blending of sympathies and doctrines. It is the little differences 



Sec. IJ7-] WITH MOHAMMEDANISM. 233 

in creeds, those microscopic distinctions which are visible only 
to the sharp eye of faith, that excite to its highest the hostility 
of fanatical sectaries. If the system had been identical in all 
other respects, the fact that it was Mohammed and not Jesus, or 
Jesus and not Mohammed, would have been sufficient for the 
utterest repugnance between them. The greater unlikenesses 
may compromise with each other, and as complemental forces, 
sometimes blend. Mohammedanism seems to have been modi- 
fied by Zoroastrianism into a Persian form, as it has also been 
modified by Hindooism into a Hindoo form. The differences 
between the Mohammedan sects appear to be founded on issues 
less grave than those which have given rise to the Christian sects, 
having reference to succession and observances rather than to 
abstract dogmas. The comparatively small divergences in this 
Arabian system may have been due in part to the homogeneous 
character of the Arabian mind, and thus more readily molded 
into permanent religious form by the confidence inspired by its 
brilliant successes in the cause of Islam. The busy subtilty which 
had distracted Christianity with futile controversy was well nigh 
exhausted before the advent of Mohammedanism. The Arabs 
when aroused into intellectual action — if indeed they were Arabs 
whose work goes by the name of Arabian Science — took rather 
to secular subjects than to the subtilties of theology; and their 
religion in its relations to Christianity has remained quite 
unchanged. Even when the conflict of Christian and Moham- 
medan powers was based especially on religious grounds, as in 
the Crusades, they appeared to bound from each other with little 
or no mutual religious influence. They affected each other, it 
is true — at any rate, the Christians learned from their enemies; 
but this was educational, intellectual, and not religious. 



CHAPTER XX. 

PAPAL SUPREMACY. 

Section 138. — The early Christians had no thought of tem- 
poral power. They were obedient to the civil authorities, and 
desired not to be molested in the exercise of their religion. But 
in the course of time all this changed. Human nature is not 
materially affected by the cast of its religion; and while the civil 
and military power of Rome was in pagan hands, its overwhelm- 
ing magnitude very naturally kept all thought of political power 
out of the minds of Christian subjects, But when they had 
become more numerous and there was sufficient inducement for 
a politic emperor to profess Christianity, the face of the religious 
world was suddenly changed. Demagogues go wherever they 
are invited by the chances of power. The high places in the 
Church were often filled by ambitious men. It was gratifying 
to be able to control civil functionaries by the terrors of the 
Church. Such terrors afforded the opportunities of power, and 
such opportunities seldom go unimproved. Bishops disciplined 
and humbled the greatest sovereigns of the earth, and came at 
length even to create and depose kings at will. The Church 
may at one time have insisted on the separation of the spiritual 
and temporal authorities to save itself from the secular power of 
rude barbarians; but later it struggled constantly to incorporate 
the temporal into the spiritual by subordinating it. 

This great ecclesiastical power developed force in various 
quarters, and like all such developments, it assumed the ten- 
dency to concentrate. The movement was a long time going 
on before it acquired organic unity in the hands of a single 
bishop. The struggle was moreover a complicated one. While 



SeC. I38.'\ THE ZENITH OF PAPAL POWER. 235 

the bishop of Rome was struggling for the ascendency, the kings 
were struggling to subordinate the nobles. The sovereigns and 
their people, the orders of the Church, and all classes of society 
being equally subject to the motives of superstition, the lead- 
ing power of the Church played them off against one another, 
not only to dwarf other bishops and thus acquire ecclesiastical 
supremacy, but to humble the temporal princes, and acquire 
dominion over kings and emperors. Monasteries and whole 
orders of monks were made independent of the bishops, and 
mendicant orders were created,— the persistent work of the 
pope to reduce the power of others and exalt his own. To the 
same end history was falsified, and authority claimed for prece- 
dents which never had an existence. The growth of the power 
at Rome to tax the clergy of all countries was an encroachment 
on both the civil and ecclesiastical powers. The pope contested 
with emperors for the nomination, election, confirmation, and 
investiture of ecclesiastical dignitaries. Meantime the election 
of the pope became less popular, and was concentrated in the 
hands of the college of cardinals. The papal contended with 
the civil power for jurisdiction in the administration of justice, 
and the canonical and civil laws came in conflict. At one time 
his confirmation by the emperor of Germany was necessary to 
the pope; but so completely were the tables turned that con- 
firmation by the pope became necessary to the emperor. In an 
actual trial of physical strength in a long war between popes and 
emperors the latter were overthrown. Kings were at the mercy 
of Rome, and they were known to surrender their kingdoms to 
the pope and receive them back as fiefs for the protection which 
this great ecclesiastical magnate was able to give. Papal power 
without as well as within the Church had risen to its zenith. It 
had made immense progress under Gregory VII. (1073-1086), 
who affected to handle sovereigns like puppets. Papal legates 
sent abroad filled with the spirit of their master assumed powers 
so despotic as to put sovereigns on their self-defense. As God's 
vicegerent on earth, the pope was not only ecclesiastically but 
civilly supreme, and he very wisely held that the pontifical 



236 PAPAL SUPREMACY. [Chap. XX, 

charge which had men's souls in keeping was far greater than 
the temporal which had only to do with their bodies. It was 
the battle between the spiritual and temporal swords that shaped 
most of the history of the Middle Ages. Of the two swords 
which the pope held the sacerdotal was far greater than the secu- 
lar. This view had the authority of canon law. Interdicts and 
excommunications were held in mortal dread, and with good 
reason, as they were sometimes executed with terrible conse- 
quences. Every interest is self-seeking to the extent of its 
opportunity; and generally ignorance and superstition gave the 
popes unbounded opportunity which they did not fail to 
improve. The abject and brutal state of mind then prevailing 
is well shown by the fact that men sometimes bartered away 
their personal liberty for the good offices of the Church; and 
also by the fact that men who spent their lives plundering, 
plundering even the church, made sure before death to purchase 
the good will of the Church with the proceeds of their plunder. 
Section 139. — Power manifests itself in waves, rising to its 
maximum and then descending. Papal power had reached its 
highest under Innocent III. (1 198-1226), and when Boniface 
VIII. ( 1 294-1 308), declared every human being in body and 
soul, whether emperor, king, freeman, or slave, subject to the 
will of the pope, he but formulized what his predecessors had 
aimed to accomplish, and what to a certain extent they had ac- 
complished. But other powers were rising, whose animus was 
directly at variance with ecclesiastical assumption. There was 
an awakening of the thinking mind through increasing knowledge 
of Greek and Roman culture. This originated a new element 
in society, a class of some intelligence with somewhat modified 
ideas which were naturally at war with the absolute pretensions 
of Rome. The feeling thus cherished diffused itself among the 
higher classes. But such changes took place tardily, one frame 
of mind having to displace another very largely by the slow 
action of heredity. Kings availed themselves of it readily 
enough, however, through self-interest, and to the infinite disgust 
of the popes taxed the clergy in their respective countries. 



Sec. 140.] EARLY PROGRESS. 237 

Practical men ventured to assert that the imperial dignity was 
dependent directly on God, and not on the pope (1338). 
Priests and laymen began to question whether there was not 
something other than authority necessary to warrant the right- 
eousness of what the Church did. A part of the Franciscan 
order turned against the pope as anti-Christ. The Council of 
Constance (1414-1418) was refractory, showing unmistakable 
signs of democratic tendency. The Council of Basle (1433) 
took away papal privileges, and attempted the correction of 
papal abuses. Councils could no longer be trusted as tools, and 
they were henceforth discontinued. The papal power declined 
precisely as it rose — through struggle and combat. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE GREAT MODERN CONFLICT. 

Section 140. — Attention has been called to the fact (section 
102) that since the beginning of existence there have been two 
antagonistic forces in action, one of which would keep things as 
they are, while the other would change them. This is true of 
nature and true of man. Human beings could not always 
remain hunters and dwellers in caves. Every improvement in 
the implements of hunting, fishing, and war would necessitate a 
change of methods, would be an innovation, would be progres- 
sion. The domestication of animals and the introduction of 
pastoral life would give a greater command of subsistence and 
render life less precarious. The adoption of agriculture would 
be a vast stride in the same direction. The addition of manu- 
factures and the commerce growing out of varied production 
and the incentive to exchange would complicate and promote 
still further the interests of society. All this appears on its face 



238 MODERN CONFLICT, \Chdp. XXI % 

to be very peaceful, and yet it was attended at every step with 
more or less conflict. The habit of doing things always in a 
particular way would not readily yield to change, and the inno- 
vation would only succeed by the advantages it gave after a long 
and persistent struggle. The tenacity of habit, especially among 
simple minded people, is a matter of common observation and 
remark. The native laborers on a public work in East India 
aptly illustrated this by their insuperable repugnance to trundling 
little wheelbarrows; they were bound to carry them on their 
heads or in their arms. Innovation under such circumstances 
might not meet with bitter, though it would meet with dogged 
opposition. But when it threatens the interests of a class, the 
opposition it arouses is very sure to be full of bitterness. Since 
in primitive times there were no classes, the little progress that 
was made had little more to do than to overcome the resistance 
of habit. The conflict, if such it may be called, between con- 
servatism and progress was very physical-like in its character. 
With the rise of classes, however, whose interests would be 
affected by innovation, passion would enter into the contest and 
render it bitter in proportion to the supposed value of the inter- 
ests at stake. The invention of a new weapon might excite envy, 
but not enmity among a primitive people; and the construction of 
a hut, not threatening the cave-dwellers with a loss, would hardly 
alarm them. Very different is it further on, when the invention 
of a labor-saving implement is interpreted as threatening evil to 
laboring men who instinctively seek in its destruction the neces- 
sary and only means of self protection. In like manner, the 
discovery of a truth pregnant with revolution sends trepida- 
tion into the ranks which are threatened, and they resist to the 
death. It is only in the higher forms of society with numerous 
and well-defined functions, where indeed change is most likely 
to occur, that this sensitiveness to change is most distinctly 
marked, and most likely to play a leading part in shaping the 
events of history. 

Section 141. — The revival of civilizing tendencies which 
brought the dark ages to a close was dual in its character — 



Sec. 141.] KINGS GAIN AS THE POPES LOSE. 239 

intellectual and social. The intellectual was due mainly to 
classic and Arabian influences. But it is not possible to separate 
the intellectual from the social, and both were promoted through 
the development of industry and commerce with greater facilities 
for intercommunication, and the rise of cities in connection 
therewith. No doubt the crusades gave an early impetus to 
both branches of the movement, being an ebullition of fanati- 
cism, which to some extent, and mainly through its disappoint- 
ments, worked off the theological state of mind, and left it par- 
tially secularized. The civilizing tendencies of the following 
centuries had precisely opposite effects on the Church and on 
the State. Priestly power had reached its zenith under the 
ignorance and barbarism of the dark ages, and the intellectual 
and social progress which supervened slowly unmasked the 
enormity of papal assumption. No sooner had the intelligence 
thus generated, time to act in results than the high hand of 
priestcraft met with opposition, lost a part of its prestige, and 
was no longer absolute in power. But the same causes which 
weakened the pope strengthened the kings. Under the begin- 
nings of social and intellectual progress came to be felt the 
growing need of greater order in society, and as this was only 
to be had in such times by the secular arm of sufficient reach 
and strength, political organization with the king at its head 
gradually encroached on the isolated sovereignties of the feudal 
system, and at length subordinated them. But the momentum 
thus acquired by this tendency could not be arrested till it 
ultimated in civil absolutism; and the despotism was now tem- 
poral in its leading character as it had before been ecclesiastical. 
In the sixteenth century this movement culminated and mon- 
archs on the continent, and even in England, were absolute. 

Despotism had now culminated in two distinct forms, — in an 
earlier age the ecclesiastical, in a later age the civil. Neither 
could stand still; there must be reaction and from those times 
till now the contest has been going on between liberty and des- 
potism, and it is not yet ended. This is the prevailing form 
which, in modern times, the great world-contest between change 



240 MODERN CONFLICT. [Chap. XXI. 

and resistance to change has assumed. It has been for centuries, 
and still is a conflict between established forms and innovating 
thought, between exclusiveness on one hand and a catholic sym- 
pathy on the other, between selfish interests and interests which 
are more magnanimous, between bigotry and toleration, between 
misty and narrow ideas and ideas which are better defined and 
more enlarged, between ignorance and intelligence. 

For generations there had been growing dissatisfaction with 
the arrogance and corruption of Rome, but all attempts at prac- 
tical reform were successfully baffled by the sinister artifices of 
professedly holy men. Councils and sovereigns had attempted 
reform without apparent result. The very council (that of Con- 
stance) which was laboring to inaugurate reform in one way sum- 
moned to martyrdom John Huss and Jerome of Prague, who 
were attempting reform in a different way; and the empire 
really fermenting with reform, yet dominated by bigotry, stampt 
out the Hussites who had sprung up from the ashes of the mar- 
tyr. The pope had his many contests with the temporal sover- 
eigns, and his secular authority was hedged in little by little; but 
in the field of religion and morals he had no successful antagonist 
till Luther rose. The Reformation was the first great rising 
against a system which had stamped out all religious freedom, 
and rigidly enforced the duty of unquestioning obedience. 
Luther and his coadjutors refused to obey; they had ideas of 
their own not only condemnatory of the practices in vogue, but 
enjoining modified views of religious duty. Luther exercised 
the prerogatives of a man, the right of individual judgment, and 
the liberty to adapt his conduct thereto ; but it was one thing to 
exercise such freedom, and quite another to recognize it as the 
sacred right of all. This he did not do. While using his own 
reason, he stigmatized reason in general as a beastly thing to be 
kept down at all hazards. His contemptuous tirades against 
reason were very different from the plea for reason and free 
inquiry made by Erigena, Roscelin, and Abelard in much darker 
times than Luther's. Manifestly, Luther only exchanged one 
authority for another, — that of the pope for a book, and he 






Sec. 141.] PROTESTANT INTOLERANCE. 241 

assumed that the doctrines of the book were just as easily ascer- 
tained as those of the pope. Yet in making up a body of doc- 
trines from the book concerning the saving power of grace, his 
own reason, covertly it may be, asserted its right to a hearing ; 
and it did so doubtless, even when in the discussion of trans- 
substantiation which sprung up among the Reformers, Luther 
held tenaciously to the literal rendering of the words, " Hoc 
meum corpus est." Evidently, thought was less definite then 
than now, and it was easier to shape the specters of the imagina- 
tion into reality, thus to eat the very flesh, and drink the very 
blood of Christ, as well as to hurl an inkstand at the devil for 
intruding on a Christian's quiet in the solitude of the Wartburg. 
Faith was in those times a prevailing mental potency which in 
these last days has been greatly demoralized by the rigid methods 
of science. 

What these reformers were after was precisely what the pope 
thought he had ; and in this respect they were all alike, — they 
imagined they must have theological finalities. People who have 
finalities of dogma are not apt to be tolerant. A holy man who 
preaches his finalities at us, is apt to be displeased if we do not 
accept them, and usually if he had the power, he would make 
acceptance compulsory. His truth is not a thing to be trifled 
with ; the well-being of the world here and hereafter depends 
on it, and his intolerant zeal appears to him to be the most 
reasonable and defensible thing in the world. It was so with 
the reformers. They took the liberty of differing from the pope, 
but they didn't intend that anybody should differ from them, if 
they could help it. The reason of that was, they were right and 
the pope was wrong. It was just as bad to go beyond them as 
to lag behind. This was strikingly exemplified when Calvin 
burned Servetus — so often referred to. Calvin was the pope of 
Geneva, and Servetus' offence grew out of the fact that he had 
more brains than Calvin under better discipline, and dared to 
use them. In the light of later times, we should not think 
Servetus' views at all alarming, but they embraced doctrines 
which Calvin could not comprehend, and which were not so 



242 MODERN CONFLICT. [Chap. XXI. 

arbitrary and cruel as his, consequently they were adjudged to 
be very bad, and Calvin must needs avouch his zeal for a holy 
cause by committing one of the worst murders recorded in 
history. Every form of bigotry and intolerance had place among 
those who protested against like things in Rome. The Protest- 
ants wanted freedom till they got power; and then whatever the 
grade or form of Protestantism, it was equally ready to withold 
from others the tolerance it had sought for itself. When the 
Episcopalians were in power, the Puritans were not allowed 
freedom of worship; and when the Puritans came into power, 
neither Episcopalians nor Catholics were allowed such freedom. 
Laud had persecuted the Puritans, and in turn the Puritans made 
a martyr of him. And again when the established church came 
into power, its people grudged to Catholics and Dissenters the 
religious liberty which was secured to them by the Declaration 
of Indulgence. And in our own land of freedom par excellence, 
the people who had fled from the persecution of Laud for their 
own religious liberty, exercised it by grim intolerance even to 
the hanging of Quakers as well as of witches. The Puritans of 
Massachusetts were worse persecutors than the Catholics of 
Maryland. 

Still those old-time reformers inaugurated a movement which 
has resulted in religious freedom, an achievement of which they 
had no conception. "They builded wiser than they knew." 
Once the authority of the Church was broken, and theologians 
began to think for themselves, they fostered the habit of a cer- 
tain form of mental independence, and maintained it, without 
formulating it as a principle. The shades of doctrine became 
so numerous, and the Christian denominations so disunited and 
even antagonistic that there could be no hearty fraternization to 
any definite end. In conflict no one was strong enough to sub- 
ject all the rest. Contention enough there was, and intolerance 
enough, but every one being in a minority it could not be the 
executor of religious despotism, and was compelled to accord to 
others the freedom it claimed for itself. Hence, freedom came 
at length to be recognized as a principle worthy to govern con- 






SeC. 142.] DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANTISM. 243 

duct, and sectaries boasted of it as if they had meant it from 
the first. It was the product, not of pious intention, but of sec- 
tarian conflict. 

Change often comes without anybody's intending it, or con- 
sciously working for it. Most changes are ready for consumma- 
tion without being even foreseen. Staid and respectable things 
are jogged from their old places by forces which none planned 
for such purpose. The meeting of Oriental, Greek, and Arabian 
thought in Europe and the improvement of industry and com- 
merce bred the Renaissance. When unlike forces meet they 
may develop new energies, and what the resultant will be none 
can foretell. All things in those days were cherished by their 
abettors as finalities. And while Protestantism supposed itself 
to be a great original which had power to fix things, it was in 
reality only a provisional activity — the starting point of a great 
movement which should gather strength with the ages. While 
it would gladly have taken control, and anchored its dogma of 
salvation by grace as a finality, it had no more power to this end 
than the wave has to stop the flow of waters. In setting the 
unconscious example of free thinking, it was setting in motion a 
power which would ultimately call in question all its cherished 
finalities of dogma. The Reformation was only a grand wave 
on the great stream which never ceases to flow. In its charac- 
ter as a system of dogmatic religion it has come down to us, 
and under the influence of modern forces it appears to be devel- 
oping a two-fold tendency — one toward Romanism, the other 
toward science. It almost seems as if the religious forces of civ- 
ilized peoples were gradually collecting into two hostile camps, 
the theological and scientific, the traditional and rational, with 
well-defined but antagonistic principles from the foundation up, 
and thus getting ready for a long war, still tacome. 

Section 142. — The decentralization of government in Eng- 
land was never so marked as on the continent. The territory was 
smaller, the great nobility were never so strong, and the central 
power made itself felt everywhere more readily. Hence, the 
contest of the people with the king for their rights began earlier, 



244 MODERN CONFLICT. [Chap. XXI. 

and makes up a larger portion of history in England than on the 
continent. The securing of Magna Charta under John, the 
"Confirmation of the Charters" under Edward III., the rise of 
the parliamentary power, were the results of victories won for the 
people, and largely by the people. The questionable title of the 
English kings during most of the fifteenth century may have 
favored the progress of constitutional government; but after the 
desolation of property and people by the war of the Roses, the 
tide of affairs turned, the movement of the centralization of 
power was too strong for the resistance made by the Commons, 
and Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth were well nigh absolute 
sovereigns. 

There is most danger of absolutism after anarchy owing to the 
felt need of security for life and property; and after despotism 
there is the most danger of license owing to reaction under the 
felt need of freedom. After the strong Tudors came the weaker 
Stuarts, when the popular element in the government acquired 
its former vigor, and proved itself able under Charles I. to empty 
the throne of a contumacious king. The disorderly condition 
of society again reacted into despotism; and thenceforth the 
result of the struggle between liberty and tyranny has been a 
more uniform enlargement of the sphere of freedom, secured by 
constitutional guarantees, and exercised under constitutional 
forms according to the measure of fitness among the people. 
This entire movement has been the consequence of the rise of 
classes in society with intelligence growing into the conscious- 
ness of power, necessitating the contest between new ideas 
springing out of the awakened intellect, and the old ideas which 
became crystallized into institutions in times past. The differ- 
ence between the doctrine of the divine right of kings and the 
doctrine of the responsibility of kings to the people, involves a 
complete intellectual revolution. 

Centralization in France did not take place so early as in 
England. The territory was larger, the nobles stronger, and 
baronial isolation and the feudal polity more complete, so that 
the king extended his jurisdiction with more difficulty, and it 



Sec. 143.] POLITICAL ACTION AND REACTION. 245 

was not till Louis XIV. that political absolutism reached its max- 
imum in France. Growing intelligence favored this tendency 
but a strong government may be administered with an intoler- 
able abuse of power, and the still growing intelligence would 
revolt against such abuse to the extent of a reaction in the 
political forces. As after the reign of Elizabeth, so after the 
reign of Louis XIV., the popular element gained rapidly in 
power; and as in England, so in France, religious liberalism and 
political liberalism made common cause in the endeavor to 
break up all forms of exclusive privilege. And again, as in 
England, a modified form of despotism supervened upon the 
disorders of revolution, and Napoleon did for France what 
Cromwell had done for England. But progress usually takes 
place by action and reaction, and amidst all these apparently 
contradictory changes, there was a fair average of winnings for 
the cause of social, political, and religious liberalism. And 
this movement is still in progress, in France, England, Ger- 
many, Italy, Russia, almost everywhere throughout the civilized 
world. It is a double movement involving a seeming paradox; 
for while individual liberty is enlarged and better secured, the 
government is more firmly knit together by the physical and 
political appliances of centralization. But we are not to encour- 
age the too common delusion of believing that what is going on 
before our eyes and to which we have become accustomed, is 
to go on forever. Covert forces may now be at work which will 
resist the tendency to greater individual freedom, and greatly 
modify the administrative direction of the central power. 

Section 143. — For the last three centuries the conflict of 
distinct ideas with old notions has been greater than ever before 
known in history. Previous to the birth of modern science, 
certain notions concerning the order and government of nature 
were well nigh universal, and held as not only true, but as 
sacredly true. These were (1), that the earth is the principal 
thing in the universe, the sun, moon, and stars being merely 
appendages thereto; (2), that the earth is flat with heaven as 
well as the heavens located above and hell beneath; (3), that 



246 MODERN CONFLICT. [Chap. XXI. 

the earth is stationary while the sun, moon, and stars go around 
it ; (4), that the earth and the heavens and all things therein 
were created out of nothing about six thousand years ago; (5), 
that death came into the world by the fall of the first man; 
(6), that God governs the world by personal supervision and 
keeps a record of the doings of every accountable being in it; 
(7), that mind is independent of corporeal structure ; (8), that 
priests were delegated the power to adjust moral and religious 
relations between man and man, and between God and man. 

These doctrines once held with unquestioning faith as divinely 
established, have either been overthrown or are now under dis- 
cussion at manifest disadvantage. The contest concerning the 
form and motion of the earth and its relation to the other mem- 
bers of the solar system, with the utter overthrow of the con- 
servative position is frequently referred to and familiar to most. 
It is very thoroughly popularized in Protestant literature, per- 
haps, because it is a case which brings out so clearly the falli- 
bility of the ecclesiastical authorities of the times. But although 
Copernicus and Galileo published their works after the rise of 
Protestantism, it does not appear that the Protestant leaders 
rallied to the support of the new philosophy. Doubtless all 
classes rejected it as indignantly as the Holy Inquisition — all 
save the very few persons with brains who dared honestly to use 
them. It required generations after this to familiarize the minds 
of the great body of the people with the idea that the earth is 
a globe which turns on its axis and revolves round the sun. 
And even now, after the earth has been so repeatedly circum- 
navigated, and all the proofs of its rotundity and motion have 
been made absolutely unanswerable, and astronomical predic- 
tions unerringly based upon them, yet there are still persons of 
the theological cast of mind who are able to prove from Scrip- 
ture and reason to their own satisfaction that the earth is flat 
and stands still. A friend of the old doctrine quite recently 
undertook to prove to A. R. Wallace and others that the surface 
of a body of water is perfectly flat; and the Rev. Jasper, a 
colored clergyman of Richmond, Virginia, has been making it 



Sec. I4Z] CLERICAL OPPOSITION TO SCIENCE. 247 

clear to gaping auditors that "the sun do move." These are of 
course extreme cases and the result of great ignorance or of 
monomania; but they show the tenacity with which a false 
notion, if once associated with superstition, still clings, and illus- 
trates the resistance which truth has often to overcome. But, 
once the teachings of Copernicus and Galileo were held to be 
heretical, atheistical, and blasphemous by the great authorities 
of the world, now they are accepted as unequivocally true by 
all those authorities. 

The contest concerning the age of the earth and the manner 
of its formation has been scarcely less bitter than that concerning 
the form and motion of the earth. Theologians supposed they 
had the highest possible authority for the doctrines that the 
earth and all that it contains were created by Almighty fiat in six 
days about six thousand years ago, and that death came into the 
world by the fall of Adam. In the contest over these points, 
Protestants have certainly been as active and acrid as Catholics, 
in opposing the fundamental principles of geological science. 
And so far as opposition is still made, the weight of it comes 
from the Protestant clergy. Believing that doctrines essential to 
the Christian religion are at stake, they have more incentive to 
bestir themselves than have the Catholic priesthood, for the 
simple reason of the greater intelligence among the Protestant 
laity, and the consequent greater danger of their falling into 
heresy. 

Wild explanations have been given of the new and trouble- 
some facts. Men assumed to teach "Mosaic Geology," who 
knew nothing of scientific geology, and by consequence blun- 
dered greatly. It was insisted that the flood carried fossils up 
the mountains ; and when found deep down in the rocks, it was 
contended that these simulations of living things were so created 
and placed there from the first. This, with much more like it, 
was to be sure very puerile; but it seemed to be sound to those 
who labored in the interest of dogmas supposed to be divine. 
Of course, these primitive notions about the creation and age of 
the world have been as completely overthrown in the logical 



248 MODERN CONFLICT. [Chap. XXL 

contest as were those other old notions concerning the flatness 
and fixity of the earth. Overthrown, indeed, but only for the 
unbiased and intelligent ! Perhaps ninety per cent, of all the 
people of the civilized world still believe according to the 
Hebrew cosmogony, that the world was arbitrarily created out of 
nothing a few thousand years ago. This creation-scene is pict- 
ured on the mind by early education, and it never fades; while 
in most minds there is no room for another. Slowly, slowly, 
does the force of logical demonstration overcome the resistance 
of mental habits formed under dogmatic teaching. 

So easy is it for the mind to entertain an absurdity to which 
it has always been accustomed that it will unhesitatingly reject 
an alternative because it is new, though unexceptionably rational. 
This is a phenomenon with which we are very familiar in our 
own times. Belief in creation by development is thought to 
be impious by many who believe in creation by arbitrary fiat. 
They are uncompromising in their demands for proof of the 
origin of species by derivation, while they discourse of origin by 
outright creation as if it were a fact of every-day experience. 
Agassiz persisted to the last in his opposition to development, 
but he had no difficulty in conceiving of the creation of mankind 
by whole nations. Agassiz was a scientist, but under the theo- 
logical bias, or some other, he went to extremes in opposing 
development, as when he declared before a popular audience 
and was applauded for so doing, that the theory could not be 
true, because the ice age was universal, and had cut off all ani- 
mated existence from the face of the earth. At the present 
moment no doubt, the opposition to the doctrine of evolution 
is mainly from the theological bias, even when it wears the 
mask of science; and some of it is just as weak and foolish as 
that which was made against the astronomers and geologists. 
An author who has recently discharged a ponderous volume at 
Darwin, Hseckel, Huxley, Tyndall, and others, upbraids the 
Christian doctors who have accepted of evolution, and frantically 
talks of "renewing the battle, even through fire and blood, if 
need be," for the tenets he champions. This desperately 






Sec. 143.] RELIGION AND SCIENCE NOT IN CONFLICT. 249 

emotional kind of advocacy leavens a great deal of bad logic, 
and no doubt meets with a great deal of sympathy from a class 
of Christian people ; — all the more honor, therefore, to church- 
men who accept development now so thoroughly proved, and 
who, as candid men, go soberly about the work of reconciliation 
by a new interpretation of the canonical authorities. 

Ever since science began to teach revolutionary truths the 
opposition made thereto has come principally from the church, 
the sects, and those in sympathy with them. Hence, this war- 
fare has been called the conflict between religion and science. 
This is a most singular error of phraseology based on a con- 
fusion of ideas, to get into even the very best of the literature 
on this subject. It implies that there is no religion on the side 
of science and an ineradicable antagonism between science and 
religion. This involves a double error. The contest has been, 
not between religion and science, but between erroneous con- 
ceptions of the order of nature which had been incorporated 
into theological systems, on the one hand, and on the other, the 
discoveries of science which are incompatible with those erro- 
neous conceptions of the order of nature. It is a contest 
between old ideas and new ones, the new for the most part being 
true, and the old, notwithstanding their religious flavor, untrue. 
Religious men may be engaged in conserving error, but surely 
they may be religious men who contend for the truth, though 
that truth be an innovation. Usually it is popular and credit- 
able to champion a doctrine of long standing, but unpopular 
and odious to stand by a newly discovered truth which unsettles 
old notions. The one requires no personal sacrifice, the other 
does. On which side then is the religion. Surely it was some- 
thing like religion that sustained Bruno and Servetus. Dare we 
affirm that they were less religious than the theological and 
gloomy bigots who destroyed them for opinion's sake ? Priests 
are, above most other classes conservative, and appear always 
to be totally blind as to what they can successfully maintain, 
and what they will eventually be compelled to give up. The 
ecclesiastical authorities and their sympathizers have always 



250 MODERN CONFLICT. [Chap. XXI. 

taken the old error under their own protection and fought 
for it to their own ultimate discomfiture. They called it 
defending religion ; but as it turned out, they were defend- 
ing an untruth which could not hold its ground, and that 
was not defending religion. It is because priests and sec- 
taries are habitually in opposition to the progress of scientific 
discovery, that students of this subject have been led into the 
error of supposing that there is conflict between religion and 
science. Let us be careful and not misapply names ; let us be 
just, and think better of religion than that. 

All intelligent people now believe that the earth is round, that 
it turns on its axis, and revolves round the sun, and is only a 
speck in the universe ; that it is millions of years old, and was 
derived from matter previously in existence, and that death was 
in the world millions of years before the advent of man. And 
constantly a larger number of intelligent people are coming to 
believe that life was primarily generated by the operation of 
natural forces, and that species including the human have taken 
form by derivation ; that the government of the universe includ- 
ing man in relation to nature, is unexceptionably by natural law 
and not by providential oversight, and that, consequently, any 
form of supernatural inteference with the established order of 
things for any purpose whatever is not possible. Yet, it is still 
only the few comparatively who accept these doctrines and are 
governed in thought and feeling by them ; but with truth on his 
side, every believer is a host, and proselytism goes steadily on. 

Section 144. — It may be here noted that the warfare between 
ideas is now carried on very differently from what it was three 
centuries ago. Then it was a word and a blow by the conserva- 
tive powers. There was no arguing with the innovator. He 
was notified that he was in error, and that if he did not recant 
he must suffer. He was indeed often seized without notice, and 
in some instances recanting was held to be without saving value, 
and death was the only satisfaction the holy cause could afford 
to accept. But now the sword has passed forever, it is to be 
hoped, from the hands of ecclesiastical bigots; and since they 



Sec. 144-1 CURRENT PERSECUTION. 25 1 

can rarely touch the person of the offender, they often aim to 
weaken the force of his logic by tainting his reputation. The 
fagot is not in fashion but the poisoned innuendo is. When the 
physical arm cannot reach to harm, social ostracism may. To 
this day, there are clergymen who will slander "Tom Paine" 
before popular audiences, and never utter a word concerning 
the good and noble things that great man did. They would 
serve the cause of religion by perpetrating an act of injustice 
against a fellow-being. And it is current now that those who do 
not receive the petrified notions concerning the creation, the 
origin of life, of species and of man, the government of the 
universe by personal supervision, and the non-dependence of 
mind on organization, are forthwith branded as "materialists," 
" atheists." Divine men and men not so divine use this method 
of calling names. It appeals to a still popular prejudice, and is 
supposed to be a conclusive and final adjudication of the case. 
The odium theologicum and sociologicum has taken the place 
of the fagot, the rack, and the dungeon. But the torture of the 
one may be made, and sometimes is made, as exquisite as the 
other, while the method of applying it may be as unjust and 
almost as brutal. 

The power to put ourselves in another's place favors justice 
and charity. Through the cultivation of our sensibilities, we 
come to shrink from imposing on others what we are not ready 
to bear ourselves. As to that, however, the persecutor is one 
who will himself play the martyr, if need be, without wincing; 
just as the shoulder-hitter loves to take as well as to give. 
Hence, the rough usage theological people gave one another in 
times past was not so bad for them as it seems to us ; so that 
our gain is not so great as the change in favor of toleration 
would seem to indicate. We must not forget the greater sensi- 
bility of the modern man. And then when we reflect that 
persecution is still active, only in a changed form, we find less 
reason to congratulate ourselves. Still there is much to be 
thankful for in the palliation already secured, and something 
more to be hopeful for. If blind impulse ever yields to intelli- 



252 MODERN CONFLICT. \Chap. XXI. 

gent sympathy among mankind, honest utterance will be more 
respected than it is to-day. And this may come about through 
the intellectual leavening of public opinion in consequence of 
which less will be feared for the stability of society and the gen- 
eral good, on account of any man's teaching. It may be per- 
ceived that there is a self-adjusting principle in society which 
neither men nor doctrines can overthrow. But this triumph of 
intellect might be attended with that coldness which is said to 
belong to intellect, and the heart may be less warm. This 
would be loss which attends the gain. But all this must be 
some way yet in the distant future. Most people still believe 
what it is pleasant to believe without inquiring too closely into 
the vouchers for its truth, and this will be the case for no tell- 
ing how long to come. 

Section 145. — In the study of this subject in current times, 
it is curious to observe how the same mind is at the same time 
influenced by contradictory conceptions. There are many who 
apply to their inquiries into nature the most rigid methods of 
science, but who scrupulously abstain from so applying them to 
religious subjects. It is as if the two fields of truth were sub- 
ject to different laws of thought. With such, religious faith is 
one thing, and science quite a different thing, — not subject to 
the same principles of verification, and not brought into close 
companionship with each other. The one is organized into the 
emotions; the other is an affair of intellect. Two incompatible 
states of thought and feeling exist peacefully side by side in the 
same mind, and apparently unconscious of each other's presence. 
It is the peaceable juxtaposition of conflicting methods as well as 
of conflicting doctrines. But this does not prevent them from 
clashing when they respectively influence different minds : and it 
is now with the moderns as it was once with the Greeks (section 
113), the incompatibility of the old and new has forced itself into 
consciousness, and it will not down. It is not certain that this 
conflict will ever end during the historical period, but it is certain 
that it will not prevent the pushing of the most rigid scientific 



Sec. I46.] CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM. 253 

methods of inquiry into every subject of interest to the human 
race. 

Section 146. — It may be proper to make note of the fact that 
there are two kinds of conservatism and two kinds of liberalism. 
Conservatism does well when it strives to retain that which is 
fitting for the times: it does not so well when it strives to retain 
what has already been outgrown. So likewise when liberalism 
proposes to establish what society is prepared for and what will 
be an improvement, it is in the right; but not when it strikes off 
into by-paths however apparently inviting, whither human nature, 
except under fanatical impulse, will not follow It is the extreme 
of each that is equally wrong and equally culpable; wherein they 
are guarded and moderate they do not clash, because the one 
conserves what should be retained, and the other introduces 
what should be adopted. People who affect high breeding are 
apt to take on airs of respectability on the merits of their 
conservatism, while the secret of such merit consists in a con- 
stitutional aversion to mental and physical exertion, and in some 
instances, in attachment to ancient privileges which have lost 
their justice, if they ever had any, but which it is made the 
height of meritorious endeavor to guard from disturbance. 
However, when they are championing the outgrown, the effete, 
the proved error, they are usurping the credit of that wiser con- 
servatism which saves only the fitting. Generous natures, and 
perhaps logical withal, espouse an innovation, and think it surely 
must be right because all progress involves innovation. There is 
an unwarranted confidence quite widely prevailing as the result 
of hasty generalization, that a doctrine must necessarily be 
"advanced," if it is only new and plausible. But it is not so easy 
a matter to determine the wiser way. Of course, all opposition 
to such wild radicalism is that form of conservatism which is 
useful in preventing the disorderly action of the social forces; 
just as opposition to the bigotry which stands in the way of pro- 
gressive discovery and beneficial innovation, is that form of 
liberalism which is necessary to prevent stagnation in the ener- 
gies of historical development. Mere conservatism has no 



254 MODERN conflict. [Chap. XXL 

special merit of its own, and is not to be approved or con- 
demned, till we ascertain what kind of conservatism it is by 
what it proposes to do; and precisely the same is true of what 
may go by the name of liberalism. The indiscriminately con- 
servative may be very aesthetic, but are apt to be lacking in 
penetration, being possessed with a power of prejudice which 
there is nothing in the mental constitution to antagonize. A 
narrow man cannot put himself in another's place, and has no 
charity. He may profess Christianity, but lacking its greatest 
virtue, he is a bigot. The indiscriminately radical may be under 
greater intellectual momentum, but there is a want of mental 
balance, and such are liable to run into gush and fanaticism. 
The noblest type of mind is that which is both conservative and 
liberal, clinging to the old that is still good, and carefully sifting 
innovating doctrines and theories to the rejection only of what 
is visionary and untenable. The ultimate test of the wiser 
choice is to be found in the result; there is no constituted 
authority and no ultimate tribunal of logic to assure us. It is 
thus that society is preserved and made to progress between the 
conflicting action of these two forces. It is a grand example of 
resultant motion. 

It may be well to discriminate between the two distinct fields 
in which conservatism and liberalism meet in conflict ; the one 
field being that of thought or theory pure and simple, the other 
that of action involving the application of theory. Upon any 
fair balancing of ethical considerations, liberalism would be 
entitled to greater latitude in the theoretical sphere than in the 
practical, as disorder in the one would be less serious than 
anarchy in the other. And usually when complicated relations 
are to be affected, there must be agitation for a long time before 
the new idea has prepared the popular temper for its acceptance 
in practical results. 

The general who declares his position tenable after his flanks 
have been turned, and the enemy is inside his works, very well 
illustrates the behavior of some of our conservatives ; they do 
not know when they are beaten. The eager general who throws 



Sec. J 46.] AN ILLUSTRATION. 255 

forward either wing of his army to intercept the supposed retreat 
of the enemy, and then has to beat a hasty retreat in order to 
concentrate in front of that same enemy who intends battle, is 
almost sure to get whipped, and his ill-fortune very well illustrates 
the fate of inconsiderate and impetuous reformers. 



PART FOURTH. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

ANTAGONISM AS A FACTOR OF EVOLUTION. 

Section 147. — In attempting to state what evolution is and 
what its primordial principles are, I shall follow Herbert Spen- 
cer's presentation of the subject in First Principles. Bating 
Mr. Spencer's speculations concerning the unknowable which 
vitiate at times even his philosophy of the knowable, his state- 
ment of the law of evolution and its first principles must be 
regarded as one of the finest products of philosophical genius. 
After some of its merely speculative adjuncts shall have been 
eliminated, and some additional weight assigned to elements of 
the problem which are lightly passed over, this body of first prin- 
ciples will probably stand as the basis of scientific philosophy 
for all time to come. 

We may preface this subject with the statement that evolution 
has its opposite, dissolution, and that these two antagonistic 
processes are constantly going on together, sometimes one, some- 
times the other predominating. According to our authority, 
"Evolution under its simplest and most general aspect is the 
integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; 



Sec. 147.} DEFINITION OF EVOLUTION. 257 

while dissolution is the absorption of motion and concomitant 
disintegration of matter." And further: "When taken together, 
the two opposite processes thus formulated constitute the history 
of every sensible existence, under its simplest form." — (First 
Principles, second edition, 281-285.) 

Our author uses the word motion, and never the word heat in 
this connection ; and yet understanding heat to be a form of 
motion, and the principal form here meant, the use of the word 
in the formula, whether so accurate or not, might render it to 
some minds somewhat more intelligible. Evolution in its sim- 
plest form would then be the condensation of matter with 
accompanying loss of heat ; and dissolution would be the dis- 
integration of matter with accompanying increase of heat. Still 
better, perhaps, and even more definite than the original formula, 
would be to retain the word motion and define its kind. Thus: 
Evolution is the integration of matter with accompanying loss 
of atomic motion; and dissolution is the disintegration of matter 
accompanied with the increase of atomic motion. Thus, if 
final dissolution should come, by the members of the solar 
system falling into the sun, there would really be no gain 
of motion, but only a transformation of motion from that of 
masses into that of atoms, just as by the contrary process of 
evolution the motion of atoms is transformed into the motion of 
aggregates. In manifold forms these two antagonistic processes 
are constantly going on together, as the history of all being 
abundantly testifies ; but while evolution now predominates in 
the aggregate, a time may come in the future when dissolution 
will gain the ascendency. 

Mr. Spencer's definition of simple evolution appears to be at 
fault in this, that it fails to express the fact that continuous 
integration and loss of motion may bring distinctive evolution 
to an end before there is any gain in motion with its accompany- 
ing disintegration. If our earth is to go the way the moon has 
gone — and Mr. Spencer believes it will — continuous integration 
and loss of motion thereon will put an end to all organization, all 
life, ail development, all evolution. The backward process will 



258 ANTAGONISM IN EVOLUTION. [Chap. XXII. 

begin long, long before there is any accession of heat or motion 
to produce disintegration; and in this it comes to pass that the 
definition of simple evolution conflicts with the definition of 
complex evolution. Is not this also shown in the case of man, 
the highest organization we know ? In old age integration with 
loss of motion is going on, but with the tendency toward simpli- 
fication in the decline and loss of faculties — the precise opposite 
of evolution proper. Then it would seem that it is only to a 
certain extent that evolution accompanies integration of matter 
and loss of motion, and that when such integration and loss 
pass this limit, the reverse process sets in, and there is simplifi- 
cation and degradation long before there is increase of motion 
with accompanying disintegration; and the formula to be precise 
should make this exception and define this limit. We may ven- 
ture to say that this new general feature of evolution which the 
author has introduced is only to be accepted with qualification. 
However, let that pass. 

Section 148. — What is evolution in its more distinctive form ? 
Change from the simple to the complex, from the vague to the 
definite, from the independence of parts to the dependence of 
parts. The organism which is at first only a cell, afterwards 
becomes a complication of cells with distinct and unlike func- 
tions. The simple organism may be cut into pieces, and each, 
piece will develop into a perfect animal of its kind; but in 
higher and more complex organisms such a thing is not possible. 
Each part has become definite in constitution, and so dependent 
on other parts that the loss of one may cause death to all. As 
complexity increases the definiteness and dependence of parts, 
consequently the integration of the whole becomes more 
complete. In his first edition Mr. Spencer thus states the law 
of evolution: "Evolution is a change from an indefinite, 
incoherent homogeneity, to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; 
through continuous differentiations and integrations." — (216). 
In his new edition the author has modified this definition with 
both a prefatory and a supplemental part. He thinks that a 
"finished conception of evolution" is "one which includes the 



Sec. I49-] MOVEMENT UNDER ATTRACTION AND REPULSION. 259 

redistribution of the retained motion, as well as that of the com- 
ponent matter." His revised definition is as follows : "Evolu- 
tion is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of 
motion; during which the matter passes from an indefinite, 
incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; 
and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel trans- 
formation." — (396). 

Section 149. — Evolution is the result of the play of forces 
in mutual relations of co-operation and antagonism with one 
another; and such action of the forces is governed by elementary 
principles concerning which it is necessary to make inquiry. 
The first to which it may be proper to call attention, is the direc- 
tion of motion; and this is found to be along the line of greatest 
traction or least resistance, or their resultant. That it takes such 
direction indicates that motion takes place under resistance. 
This is found to be the case without exception; and what does 
it imply? It points unmistakably to antagonism in the action of 
the forces which are constantly seeking equilibrium and never 
attaining it. Mr. Spencer says: "From universally co-existent 
forces of attraction and repulsion, there result certain laws of 
direction of all movement. Where attractive forces alone are 
concerned, or rather are alone appreciable, movement takes place 
in the direction of their resultant; which may, in a sense, be 
called the line of greatest traction. Where repulsive forces 
alone are concerned, or rather are alone applicable, movement 
takes place along their resultant; which is usually known as the 
line of least resistance. And where both attractive and repulsive 
forces are concerned, or are appreciable, movement takes place 
along the resultant of all the tractions and resistances. Strictly 
speaking, this last is the sole law; since by the hypothesis, both 
forces are everywhere in action." — (288, 289: 225. — Here as else- 
where in this chapter the figures before the colon belong to the 
first American edition, and those after the colon to the second 
American edition, of First Principles.). 

All motion takes place under resistance along the lines of least 
resistance; and this resistance is due to the action of forces 



260 ANTAGONISM IN EVOLUTION. [Chap. XXII. 

which do not move along the same line in the same direction, 
but which cross and meet one another at every possible angle, 
thus presenting a maze of conflicting lines of attraction and 
repulsion. 

Section 150. — Rhythm of motion is a prevailing phenomenon 
in the action of the forces. Vibrating movement comes under 
this head. Wave motion illustrates it, and this is sometimes 
compound, as when a larger wave carries smaller ones. It is 
concerned in all those phenomena in which " extremes follow 
one another." It may be truly said that all phenomena take 
place in careers of movement. In atmospheric currents, after 
one pulse of motion there is a lull, and this process is constantly 
repeated. Every blast of every storm conforms to the law. 
The progress of history is not made by a steady, uniform move- 
ment, but goes in waves of action and reaction. It is rhythmic. 
This rhythm of motion, like motion in the direction of least resist- 
ance, is true of motion, whether in its simplest or most complex 
forms; true in mechanics on earth and among the heavenly 
bodies, true in life, in mind, in society, everywhere. But what 
lies at the bottom of this rhythm as its cause? Rhythm is the 
form which motion assumes in taking the direction of least resist- 
ance, and is, therefore, intimately related to action and reaction, 
to antagonism in the forces. Mr. Spencer concludes: "Thus, 
then, rhythm is a necessary characteristic of all motion. Given 
the co-existence everywhere of antagonistic forces — a postulate 
which, as we have seen, is necessitated by the form of our experi- 
ence — and rhythm is an inevitable corollary from the persistence 
of force."— (334:271.) 

This passage is none the less to the purpose that it shows 
how reluctantly the author admits the philosophical value of 
antagonism. He uses the co-existence everywhere of antagonistic 
forces in order to make rhythm a corollary of the persistence of 
force. He might have written: — Given the persistence of force 
— or given the invariable quantity of force, rhythm is the inevit- 
able result of the universal co-existence of antagonism in the 
forces, — such antagonism being a postulate so radical as to be 



Sec. 1$ '/.] THE CONDITIONS OF PLASTICITY. 26 1 

necessitated by the form of our experience. We can readily see 
how rhythm is a consequence from the play of opposition among 
the forces; and there might be a partial remittance of certain 
forms of force, thus tainting the universality of persistence, and 
still would antagonism exist as the basis of rhythm in the action 
of the forces. Gravity might remit one-half its force every other 
hour, and thus invalidate persistence, but still the answer of the 
ocean-surface to the winds would be unequivocally rhythmic. 
Rhythm is not a corollary of persistence, but of antagonism. 

Section 151. — In the first edition of First Principles there is 
a chapter on the Conditions Essential to Evolution, the leading 
points of which are embodied with larger philosophical meaning 
in the new chapter on Simple and Compound Evolution. Indis- 
pensable conditions of evolution are that there shall be a proper 
mobility of the parts, and that these shall be subject to the action 
of incident forces. If the parts cohere too firmly such forces 
cannot effect the change which evolution requires; and if they 
cohere too little they cannot retain the form of such changes 
as evolution requires. " The highest degrees of evolution are 
found in semi-solid bodies, or bodies that come midway between 
the two extremes specified." — (First Edition, 337.) 

Now, what is it that maintains this intermediate condition of 
bodies in which are manifested the phenomena known as evolu- 
tion ? It is the resultant of two antagonistic forces. If attrac- 
tion in its several forms predominates, there is not sufficient 
pliancy to yield to the incident forces. If, on the other hand, 
repulsion prevails so far as to maintain either the gaseous or fluid 
state of matter, there is not sufficient permanency in the changes 
wrought by the incident forces, and there can be no evolution. 
Then, an essential condition of this process is, that the antago- 
nism of these primordial forces, or forms of force, attraction and 
repulsion, shall maintain a proper balance between too great 
rigidity and too little. On the assumption of the nebular hypoth- 
esis, when there was too much heat — that is too much repulsion 
— there could be no evolution in the form of life; and if radiation 
should continue, a time will come when there will be too little heat 



262 ANTAGONISM IN EVOLUTION. \Chap. XXII. 

— not repulsion enough within the earth's sphere to maintain 
the plastic form of matter against advancing solidification, and 
evolution in the form of life will come to an end. There is 
little of interest for us in the phenomena of evolution, but what 
pertains to that intermediate state in which there is a proper 
balance of the antagonistic forces for the development and 
existence of animate forms. 

But while this condition of intermediate mobility is that in 
which evolution finds its highest expression, it must not be forgot- 
ten that this implies in other ways the contact of forces. The 
cooling of the earth brought about contrast between its tempera- 
ture and that of the sun. Daily rotation and the action of the 
sun secured the alternation of less and greater heat within mod- 
erate limits, involving activity and rest as a condition of organic 
evolution. The very nature of an incident force or external 
influence, like the sun's rays, is that it shall, not figuratively, but 
literally, act on the aggregate to mold it into new forms by over- 
coming resistance. In simple mechanical action, a jar facilitates 
readjustment. Vibratory motion has wide range from the invisi- 
ble to the visible, and without it there could not be such readjust- 
ment of parts as evolution requires ; and vibratory motion, as of 
heat and light from the sun, involves action and reaction — 
antagonism in a modified form. 

Section 152. — Next, the instability of the homogeneous and 
the multiplication of effects. The result of the action of forces 
upon each other is that, what may have been throughout alike 
comes to be unlike in its parts; and this unlikeness increases 
under the continued action and reaction of agencies which 
themselves become more and more unlike. Thus, any force 
radiating from a point outside of, and capable of effecting 
changes on, a sphere, will act very differently on different parts 
of it, and produce contrasts in the effects. The center of the 
surface next the force would be most affected, while the opposite 
side of the sphere might not be affected at all. The contrast of 
results would arise in consequence of the contrast in the situa- 
tion of the parts with respect to one another, and to the force 



Sec. TSS-] SEGREGATION AND INTEGRATION. 263 

which acts upon them. The action of the sun on the earth is a 
familiar example of this law. 

If it were possible for a body to be perfectly homogeneous in 
all respects including the situation of its parts (which it is not), 
and this body were exposed to the effective action of unlike 
forces, its homogeneity would be changed into heterogeneity. 
It makes no difference whether we speak of force acting on 
matter, and matter reacting on force; or whether we resolve 
matter into its ultimate form of force as best known to con- 
sciousness, it is still true that the action between the forces and 
the matter, or between the forces and the forces, is reciprocal. 
One force in whatever form cannot act on another without itself 
being acted on. This mutual action and reaction lead to com- 
plicated results, for no sooner is the homogeneity or the minor 
forms of heterogeneity disturbed than the multiplication of 
effects begins, and a low grade of complexity prepares the way 
for still greater complexity. These results cannot be contem- 
plated without having in mind that form of antagonism which is 
known as action and reaction. 

Section 153. — To the next succeeding chapter, Mr. Spencer 
has given the title of Differentiation and Integration, while the 
subjects treated of appear to be segregation and integration [I 
retain this criticism which was independently made from a study 
of the chapter; and singularly enough the same chapter in the 
new edition (1877) is placed under the head of Segregation, 
simply]. By differentiation the units or parts are made unlike, 
and this comes about in consequence of the instability of the 
homogeneous and the multiplication of effects. Were there not 
some process or processes by which the unlike could be sepa- 
rated, and the like brought together, the heterogeneity which 
results from the transformation of the uniform into the multi- 
form, might be an indefinite and disorderly, and not as we 
know it to be, a definite and orderly, heterogeneity. But by the 
separation of the unlike and the integration of the like, larger 
units are established with definite relations to one another. The 
same relations in the manifestations of force which produce 



264 ANTAGONISM IN EVOLUTION. \Chap. XXII. 

unlikeness by differentiation, also separate the unlike and bind 
together the like. In both cases, it is the unlike character of 
the objects acted upon by the forces, or the unlike character of 
the forces which act upon the objects; and evermore there is 
action and reaction. 

Mr. Spencer summarizes as follows: "First, that like units, 
subject to a uniform force capable of producing motion in them, 
will be moved to like degrees in the same direction. Second, 
that like units if exposed to unlike forces capable of producing 
motion in them, will be differently moved — moved either in dif- 
ferent directions or to different degrees in the same direction. 
Third, that unlike units if acted on by a uniform force capable 
of producing motion in them, will be differently moved — moved 
either in different directions or to different degrees in the same 
direction. Fourth, that the incident forces themselves must be 
affected in analogous ways: like forces falling on like units must 
be similarly modified by the conflict; unlike forces falling on 
like units must be dissimilarly modified; and like forces falling 
on unlike units must be dissimilarly modified. These proposi- 
tions admit of reduction to a still more abstract form. They all 
of them amount to this: — that in the actions and reactions of 
force and matter, an unlikeness in either of the factors necessi- 
tates an unlikeness in the effects; and that in the absence of 
unlikeness in either of the factors the effects must be alike." — ■ 
(438: 481). 

Throughout all these manifold forms of action, conflict is 
obvious; without it, the phenomena of differentiation and inte- 
gration by which heterogeneity arises and assumes the form of 
evolution, could not take place. No principle which Mr. Spen- 
cer has brought to light, is fuller of meaning than this of segre- 
gation by which order is brought out of chaos and direction 
given to development. 

Section 154. — A body in motion would continue to move for- 
ever in the same direction if not disturbed by some external 
force. In the inorganic realm this is called "inertia." A simi- 
lar principle in the organic realm is known as "heredity." By 



Sec. 2^4.] NATURAL SELECTION. 265 

virtue of heredity, organic forms persist from one generation to 
another without change. The offspring is like the parent, and 
the links of the genealogical chain are all alike. A moving 
body is exposed to many causes of disturbance, and its motion 
is liable to be deflected from a straight line. The same is true 
of the organic form. It is exposed to modifying influences, and 
the offspring is liable to vary from the precise form of the par- 
ent. The organism must be adapted to the external conditions 
with which it has to do; and as these conditions are constantly 
changing, corresponding changes must arise in the organism, else 
it would suffer disadvantage, and perhaps perish. Under the 
action of the environment, such variations in the organism as are 
best for it, would be most likely to spring up; but if such as are 
detrimental should arise, there is a "first principle" which would 
prevent their persistence. Reference is made, of course, to 
"natural selection," an element of the problem to which Mr. 
Spencer has not given sufficient prominence in his treatment of 
First Principles. In connection with the multiplication of 
effects and the integration of the same, natural selection is a 
powerful factor in the phenomena of development. And what- 
ever may be the part which antagonism plays in differentiation 
and integration, it is especially conspicuous in guaranteeing such 
integrated forms as may afford most fitness for survival in the 
midst of hostile forces animate and inanimate. 

In this connection antagonism appears under different forms. 
The persistence of type and the variation of type are opposite 
phenomena. Variation takes place under the play of action and 
reaction between the organism and its environment. And with- 
out universal antagonism in manifold and varying forms, natural 
selection could not take place. Its peculiar power in evolution 
is dependent on the many-sided conflict between individuals, 
groups, species, on ground favorable or unfavorable to the dif- 
ferently qualified contestants, — a complication of antagonism 
which shapes results, and determines what individuals and races 
shall be the victors and survivors. 



266 ANTAGONISM IN EVOLUTION. [Chap. XXII. 

Section 155. — It is not the purpose of this statement to pre- 
sent a view of Evolution and its principles, but only such hint 
of them as may be necessary to show that the antagonistic action 
of forces is concerned in all of them. Mr. Spencer's chapters 
on the subject are not only a statement of evolution, but an 
example of it, and they are entitled to a high place in the modern 
curriculum of culture and intelligence. The concluding chapter, 
that on Equilibrium, is a luminous one. The conflict of forces 
is more obvious in the phenomena of equilibration than in some 
others already discussed. Equilibration has reference, of course, 
to the balancing of opposing forces ; and though we may not 
fully agree with the author on this subject, his full and complete 
recognition of antagonism has all the more weight for the doc- 
trine of conflict which it is the purpose here to illustrate. 

We quote : " In all cases then, there is a progress toward 
equilibration. That universal co-existence of antagonist forces 
which, as we before saw, necessitates the decomposition of every 
force into divergent forces, at the same time necessitates the 
ultimate establishment of a balance. Every motion being motion 
under resistance, is continually suffering deductions ; and these 
unceasing deductions finally result in the cessation of the 
motion." — (441, 442 : 484, 485). " So long as there remains a 
residual force in any direction — be it excess of a force exercised 
by the aggregate on its environment, or of a force exercised by 
its environment on the aggregate, equilibrium does not exist ; 
and therefore the redistribution of matter must continue. 
Whence it follows that the limit of heterogeneity towards which 
every aggregate progresses, is the formation of as many special- 
izations and combinations of parts, as there are specialized and 
combined forces in the unit."— (448: 490). Again, in relation 
to the emotions : " And thus the ultimate state, forming the 
limit towards which evolution carries us, is one in which the 
kinds and quantities of mental energy daily generated and trans- 
formed into motions, are equivalent to, or in equilibrium with, 
the various orders and degrees of surrounding forces which 
antagonize such motions." — (465 : 507). 



Sec. I56.] ANTAGONISM AND PERSISTENCE. 267 

Attraction and repulsion which divide the empire between 
them in all minor phenomena, are equally rivals in that incon- 
ceivable totality of phenomena, known as the universe. At the 
close of a magnificent speculation, Mr. Spencer says : " Appa- 
rently, the universally co-existent forces of attraction and repul- 
sion, which as we have seen, necessitate rhythm in all minor 
changes throughout the universe, also necessitate rhythm in the 
totality of its changes — produce now an immeasurable period 
during which the attractive forces predominating, cause universal 
concentration, and then an immeasurable period during which 
the repulsive forces predominating, cause universal diffusion — 
alternate eras of evolution and dissolution." — (482 : 537). 

Section 156. — It is not the intention to rest this doctrine of 
antagonism on the authority of Herbert Spencer; it has its basis 
in facts which are open to the commonest observation. The 
writer held this doctrine and had mentally worked it out in 
some of its relations years before he knew of Mr. Spencer, or had 
opportunity to read his First Principles. But it must be men- 
tioned that this great author has had no theory of antagonism to 
bring into prominence, and consequently has not been biased in 
favor of any such view of the constitution of nature. His bias 
took a very different direction, and with evident partiality, he 
has pressed the persistence of force as the cardinal principle 
and factor of evolution. We have not far to look for the prob- 
able reason of this. Mr. Spencer imagines that he finds in 
force as known to consciousness, something akin to what he 
calls absolute force, which is but another name for the 
unknowable — a philosophical child of the author's, which it 
would be unnatural for him to neglect. It is not to be imagined 
for a moment that without persistence there would be evolution. 
That, however, is not the point. Persistence may be essential 
to evolution; but at the same time there may be some other 
principle equally essential, and much more variously and con- 
spicuously so, — and indeed even more fundamentally so. 

We have quoted Mr. Spencer to the effect that the direction 
of motion is due to "the universally co-existent forces of attrac- 



268 ANTAGONISM IN EVOLUTION. [C/lOp. XXII. 

tion and repulsion;" nevertheless, he eventually resolves it into 
the persistence of force. It is very true that the laws of motion 
as known to science, could not be laws, if force were not per- 
sistent; but granting force to be, not persistent, but intermittent 
or remitting, would not motion still take place in the direction of 
least resistance? Motion is due to force; and in a sense, the con- 
tinuity of motion to the persistence of force; but the direction of 
motion is a very different thing. Suppose gravity should sud- 
denly remit one-half its force just as you throw a pebble into the 
air; would not its direction conform to the law of least resistance 
or greatest traction precisely as before? .Even if the earth's 
attraction should suddenly change into repulsion, the pebble 
would just as surely observe the same law of motion. If two 
currents of equal volume and force were meeting, and one of 
them should suddenly remit half its force, the two currents on 
meeting would still obey the law of motion in the direction of 
least resistance. However fitful the intermission or change 
of force might be, it is impossible to conceive of an instance in 
which motion would not obey this law. Persistence, distinct- 
ively as such, has nothing to do with it; it is force under the 
forms of attraction and repulsion, in consequence of which, 
motion always takes place under resistance, that determines the 
direction of motion in the line of least resistance. 

In like manner Mr. Spencer affirms that the instability of the 
homogeneous and the multiplicity of effects are due to persist- 
ence. It is admitted that antagonism plays a part here as else- 
where, but he contends that it does so because it is what he 
calls a corollary of persistence. Let us take a supposition of 
his own: "If centres of force, absolutely uniform in their 
powers, were diffused with absolute uniformity through unlimited 
space, they would remain in equilibrium." — (386: 429). That is 
their stability would be complete. This assumes the persistence 
of force — it would be the case if force were persistent; but sup- 
pose that the forces in certain parts of the system were fitfully 
intermittent, what would become of the stability of the system ? 
In this strongest of supposable cases, in which persistence would 



Sec. 157.] CONCEPTION OF ANTAGONISTIC FORCES. 269 

even maintain absolute stability, non-persistence would over- 
throw it. And in relative stability or equilibrium, the irregular 
loss or gain of force in default of persistence would disturb the 
balance and produce inevitable change. All that Mr. Spencer 
has succeeded in doing, and all that can be done from the very 
nature of the case, is to show that in the universe as known to 
us, the persistence of force, while not the cause of the instability 
of the homogeneous, is, nevertheless, compatible with it. 

The same precisely is true of the multiplicity of effects. 
Take the case of a force radiated upon a sphere from a point 
outside of it. Suppose that the rays falling on the center of the 
hemispherical surface should be arbitrarily intensified and the 
outer rays weakened in default of persistence, then would the 
disparity of effects be greater than under the integrity of per- 
sistence. By the fitfulness of force, effects might multiply even 
more rapidly than by persistence. The multiplication of effects 
is due, not to force, in its homogeneous character of persistence, 
but to force in its dual character of action and reaction, attrac- 
tion and repulsion. 

Section 157. — I do not forget Mr. Spencer's position that 
the persistence of force is only conceivable under the antago- 
nistic forms of attraction and repulsion. I quote: "Matter 
cannot be conceived except as manifesting forces of attraction 
and repulsion. Body is distinguished in our consciousness from 
space, by its opposition to our muscular energies; and this 
opposition we feel under the two-fold form of a cohesion that 
hinders our efforts to rend, and a resistance that hinders our 
efforts to compress. Without resistance there can be merely 
empty extension. Without cohesion there can be no resistance. 
Probably this conception of antagonistic forces is originally 
derived from our flexor and extensor muscles. But be this as 
it may, we are obliged to think of all objects as made up of 
parts that attract and repel each other; since this is the form of 
our experience of all objects." — (287: 224). 

The following is an example of the way in which the writer 
pushes persistence into the first place: "The necessity we are 
13 



270 ANTAGONISM IN EVOLUTION. [Chap. XXII. 

under of conceiving force under the two-fold form of attraction 
and repulsion, turns out to be but an implication of the neces- 
sity we are under of conceiving Force as persistent." — (497: . 
. .). He affirms repeatedly that the equality of action and 
reaction is a corollary from persistence; and we quote once 
more: ''Thus from the existence of a force that is forever 
unchangeable in quantity, there follows, as a necessary corollary, 
the co-extensive existence of these opposite forms of force — 
forms under which the conditions of our consciousness oblige us 
to represent that absolute force which transcends our knowledge." 
— (484: 515). By reversing the terms of this proposition, it may 
be made to read: — From the co-existence of these opposite forms 
of force in which action and reaction are equal, there follows as a 
necessary corollary, the existence of a force that is forever 
unchangeable in quantity: — and this expresses the historical, and 
in all probability, the necessary order of these two conceptions. 
-The persistence of force simply means that, whatever the 
form it may assume, its quantity is unalterable, never more, 
never less. Like the unalterable quantity of matter, it was not 
known until proved by quantitive experiment. It may be easy 
now to establish these truths by the a priori, or system-building 
method ; but the method lies under suspicion, since its most 
brilliant achievements are won after the fact is known. All that 
was vaguely known of persistence before it was proved by scienti- 
fic experiment, was derivable from the varied experiences of life 
in relation to force, and of which attraction and repulsion, action 
and reaction, conflict in its various forms, constituted the most 
noticeable feature. These opposing forms of force were well 
known; persistence properly such was not known; and if either 
is a corollary from the other, the conception of persistence is a 
corollary from the conception of antagonism. 

It will not detract from the fundamental character of these 
opposite forms of force, to qualify the conception of them, as 
"forms under which the conditions of our consciousness oblige 
us to represent that absolute force which transcends our knowl- 
edge." It is with knowledge, and not with the absolute that we 



Sec. I57.] THE SENSE OF RESISTANCE PRIMARY. 27 1 

are here concerned; and it is this very necessity which the 
nature of our consciousness imposes on us, that gives its highest 
value to the conception of force as dual and opposite in char- 
acter. Whatever his speculations concerning the absolute, Mr. 
Spencer does not permit himself to go outside of consciousness 
in what concerns the relative. Our consciousness is the very 
highest court to which appeal can be made in a case of this 
kind, and when it decides in favor of necessary conflict in the 
original nature of force, that settles it. What else shall we go 
by but consciousness? "Universally co-existent attraction and 
repulsion" are by the necessary constitution of our minds, the 
ultimate forms under which we conceive of force. Our concep- 
tion of the universal equality of action and reaction as a neces- 
sary property of force, is the original, and persistence the derived. 
This view is made stronger by the fact that the most primitive 
element of knowledge is the sense of resistance. By this we get 
our first and most elementary conception of external things. It 
is the basis of all that is built up in consciousness; and this sense 
of resistance unequivocally involves the antagonism of force, the 
equality of action and reaction. Admitting that " this concep- 
tion of antagonist forces is originally derived from the antago- 
nism of our flexor and extensor mnscles;" that does not belittle 
the fact of antagonism. Whence came the flexors and extensors 
and other opposing muscles, the supinators and pronators, the 
abductors and adductors, etc. ? By the light of Spencer's own 
philosophy, from development in response to ever-present and 
ever-active antagonism in the environment. "The mainte- 
nance of such a moving equilibrium [the organism] requires the 
habitual genesis of internal forces, corresponding in number, 
directions, and amounts to the external incident forces — as 
many inner functions, single or combined, as there are single or 
combined outer actions to be met." "The final structural 
arrangements must be such as will meet all the forces acting on 
the aggregate by equivalent antagonistic forces." — (459:501.) 
This recognizes external antagonism as primary and organic 
antagonism as secondary. These final structural arrangements, 



272 ANTAGONISM IN EVOLUTION. [Chap. XXII. 

these opposing muscles are not so surely the source of our con- 
ception of antagonism, as they are the product of this same 
antagonism. The system is a unit, and it everywhere involves 
conflict. 

Section 158. — In the new edition of First Principles (1920- 
192a 1 ), the author takes the position that we cannot prove the 
persistence of force, because our proofs necessarily assume the 
truth of persistence. This is a refinement of metaphysical 
subtlety which we think fails of its object. The author holds 
that there is such difference between the indestructibility of 
matter, the continuity of motion, and the persistence of force, 
that while the first and second can be proved, the last is an 
original truth which admits of no proof. " Persistence of the 
space-occupying species of force cannot be proved; for the rea- 
son that it is tacitly assumed in every experiment or observation 
by which it is proposed to prove it." But what is this space- 
occupying species of force? It is that which resists the touch. 
" Without resistance there can be merely empty extension." 
Space-occupying force offers resistance; it is matter — it is what 
all through the volume Mr. Spencer means by the word matter. 
Then, since matter and such force are identical, matter cannot 
be proved indestructible any more than force can be proved per- 
sistent. If in the one case the point to be proved is assumed in 
the proof, it is so in the other and persistence and indestructi- 
bility, as well as force and matter are resolved into one and the 
same thing. 

Mr. Spencer rests the correctness of this exegesis on the 
nature of that cardinal element in all systematic knowledge, the 
unit of linear extension, which derives its importance in this 
relation from our unwavering confidence in its constancy. All 
science is built up on the fact that this unit of measure is a 
uniform quantity. Its value is a practical one; it is the practical 
unit of measure we have to deal with : — whence does this get its 
value so as to secure our confidence? From observation and 
comparison by which its practical reliability is proved, just like 
any other instrument of research, or fact of science. This 



Sec. 1^8.'] A QUESTION OF PROOF. 273 

practical unit of measure does not challenge our faith independ- 
ent of experience. "These spaces between marks" can only be 
made to exist on matter, and we only accept them in use when 
the linear uniformity of the spaces has been thoroughly tested 
and verified. If, on the other. hand, this linear unit is more than 
this or something else, — if it is not what is defined as space 
between marks on a mass of matter — then it is something which 
exists only in the mind — it is an idea or conception. But even 
in a practical point of view our ultimate faith in the constancy 
of the linear unit is built up on our more radical faith in the 
constancy of our perceptions. We detect the difference in 
things on the assumption of such perceptive constancy; — and is 
it not right here that we find the constant, the unalterable? If 
we could not trust our senses, we could not determine that any 
unit of measure is constant and reliable; and, consequently, 
could have no confidence in the accuracy of its work, and there 
would be no physical science. Then does this confidence in 
the uniformity of the linear unit assume the truth of the per- 
sistence of force as a general principle? It resolves itself ulti- 
mately into confidence in our mental integrity — into confidence 
in the generalization based on the integrity of perception, and 
we believe in the constancy of the linear unit on the ultimate 
warrant of experience. Mr. Spencer regards our consciousness 
of space as built up out of our experience of the resistance 
offered by external objects in space. Our confidence in the unit 
of linear extension is a necessary part of this consciousness of 
space and cannot be divorced from experience. The mind 
accepts its "intuitions" of space because it must, and without 
demonstration. Precisely the same is true of our consciousness 
concerning the uniformity of the linear unit. Through experi- 
ence it has become organized into the mental constitution as a 
part of it. The mind has a fixed consciousness of the uniformity 
of the linear unit, and it accepts such uniformity because it must 
and without demonstration; but it does not so accept the gen- 
eral doctrine of persistency. This general doctrine no more 
follows from the accepted constancy of the linear unit than 



274 ANTAGONISM IN EVOLUTION. {Chafe. XXII. 

from the constancy of the axiom that "all right angles are equal 
to each other." The fact of persistency may, indeed, on theo- 
retical grounds, lie at the bottom of all this; but only some 
minds so recognize it after a great deal of philosophical refine- 
ment which constitutes no part of the general mental experi- 
ences of the human race. The uniformity of the linear unit 
has all along been accepted without the least consciousness that 
it had anything to do with a general principle concerning the 
unalterable quantity of force; just as the axioms of mathematics 
may be accepted without the least consciousness of any neces- 
sary connection with the mathematical demonstrations which 
assume their truth. The fact that the general principle of per- 
sistence had to be proved by experiment involving ingenious 
devices of measurement, thereby showing it to be a principle 
which lies outside the common interpretation of experience, is 
fatal to the assumption that it is an ultimate datum of conscious- 
ness. No sane mind ever doubted that an inch is an inch and 
a pound is a pound; and these original data are necessary in 
reaching that other truth, the persistency of force; and the 
former does not imply the latter any more than the truths of 
mathematics take for granted the universality of gravitation. 
Force might be persistent in the stable form known as matter 
on which the linear unit is marked, without being necessarily 
persistent in those more subtle forms to which the term is usually 
applied; and it might be accepted as persistent in the one case, 
and still remain to be proved persistent in all its other diversi- 
fied forms. This was precisely the situation till very recently. 
The general principle of persistence and the uniformity of a 
given space are two distinct and unlike things, just as the law of 
gravity and the unit of weight are two distinct and unlike things. 
The constancy of the units of length and of weight is taken 
for granted on the basis of experience, in the demonstration 
both of the law of persistence and the law of gravity, but they 
are not for that reason to be confounded with either. 

But Mr. Spencer goes further than this. He concludes that : 
" The force of which we assert persistence is that absolute force 



Sec. I59-\ AN EQUATION OF PERSISTENCY. 275 

of which we are indefinitely conscious as the necessary correlate 
of the force we know. By the persistence of force, we really 
mean the persistence of some cause which transcends our 
knowledge and conception. In asserting it we assert an uncon- 
ditional reality, without beginning or end." — (192^). What then 
are the author's points ? First, that in assuming the constancy 
of the linear unit we assume the persistence of force, because 
both are qualitatively one and the same thing ; and secondly, 
in accepting the persistence of force as we know it, we accept the 
persistence of an absolute force ; therefore, the constancy of the 
linear unit involves the persistence of absolute force. The series 
of qualitative equivalents would be as follows: (1) The con- 
stancy of the linear unit=(2) the persistence of force=(3) the 
persistence of Absolute Force=(4) the Unconditioned Reality= 
(5) the Unknowable. Is not that overstrained and far-fetched ? 
Is not, indeed, the first term of the series totally unlike 
the second in kind, while the second is unlike the third, fourth, 
and fifth, in kind, the series itself being a heterogeneous 
absurdity ? 

Having quoted Mr. Spencer in favor of the universality of 
antagonism, in which I believe he is right, it would be unjust to 
withhold his view concerning the still greater value of persist- 
ence, in which I believe he is wrong. And having so quoted, it 
becomes a necessary part of the argument to make good the 
view I hold concerning the precedence of antagonism. 

Section 159. — One of the last volumes which the writer con- 
sulted with a view to the final revision of this work, was Chancey 
Wright's Philosophical Discussions. I was much surprised as 
well as gratified to read the following: "With a view to such 
assimilation, and in opposition to 'the law of evolution' as a 
generalization from the phenomena of growth, we will now pro- 
pose another generalization, which we cannot but regard as bet- 
ter founded in the laws of nature. We may call it the principle 
of counter movements, — a principle in accordance with which 
there is no action in nature to which there is not some counter 
action, and no production in nature from which in infinite ages 



276 ANTAGONISM IN EVOLUTION. \Chap. XXII. 

there can result an infinite product In biological phenomena 
this principle is familiarly illustrated by the counter-play of the 
forces of life and death, of nutrition and waste, of growth 
and degeneration, and of similar opposite effects. In geology, 
the movements of the materials of the earth's crust through the 
counter actions of the forces by which the strata are elevated and 
denuded, depressed and deposited, ground to mud or hardened 
to rock, are all of the compensative sort; and the movements of 
the gaseous and liquid oceans which surround the earth mani- 
fest still more markedly the principle of counter movements in 
the familiar phenomena of the weather." — (10). 

This fully recognizes the general doctrine of conflict, but the 
author was doubtless in error in setting up this principle as a 
rival of evolution for philosophical honors. One does not 
exclude the other ; they are co-operative. Both are true each in 
its own appropriate sphere. Evolution is the more partial fact ; 
conflict in active form, or ever ready to be called into action, is 
everywhere present. Conflict is present whether the phenomena 
be those of evolution, degradation, or dissolution. None of 
these can take place without conflict. While evolution is going 
on in one department of nature, degradation may be going on in 
another, and conflict is the sine qua non of both. And wherever 
there is evolution, it always passes at length into dissolution as 
the counter form of the career ; conflict never ends. The career 
of evolution, degradation, and dissolution is true of individuals ; 
it is true of races ; it is true of societies ; it is true of all national 
existence ; it is true everywhere and of everything. At particular 
periods evolution predominates, but it is impossible to foretell 
when these periods may come to an end. Herbert Spencer 
deprecates the criticism of Leslie for looking too exclusively at 
isolated cases ; he insists on taking the whole, and then he 
affirms that evolution is prevailing, and characterizes the phenom- 
ena in general. That is true sometimes and in some fields ; but 
at other times and in other fields, it is not true. It is true of 
organic development on the planet; but there is no known 
principle which enables us to settle when that development shall 



Sec. ISP-] THE ACME OF EVOLUTION INDETERMINATE. 277 

reach its maximum and begin to decline. It is not true that 
development has generally prevailed in the aggregate of human 
societies. There have been times when for centuries together 
degradation was the prevailing tendency. A philosopher thrust 
into the tenth century could not have looked hopefully on the 
signs of evolution in comparing the darkness and degradation of 
that period with the departed light and glory of ancient Greece 
and Rome and of primitive Christianity. It is true that social 
evolution prevails in our own times ; but we have no assurance 
that it will last for a long period in the future. The assumption 
that it will may overlook many causes somewhat obscurely at 
work which will react as fatally against the present civilization, 
as other causes reacted against the Greek and Roman. Organic 
development may have already reached its maximum of excel- 
lence. It may go no further, or very little further, even in the 
brain of man. It may be different, however, with societies. 
Social evolution has probably a long period before it, and great 
changes may be in store for the future in the line of ascent ; but 
this is liable to arrest and decline in the future as well as in the 
past. As one society or form of society goes up another goes 
down. While evolution is going on there is always present and 
mingled with it some form of degradation. What the aggregate 
result of such complication of conflicting causes may be at 
any period, there are at present no means of determining. 
If we look at the aggregate, as Mr. Spencer advises, we must 
totally reverse his affirmation of general evolution, — if we only 
look far enough. The great society which arises and exemplifies 
evolution in the first part of its career, degradation later on, and 
dissolution at last, is a type of all societies, of all humanity. 
This must be acknowledged when we study the past and look 
into the distant future j and it probably would come on earth 
through the operation of social and moral causes, whether the 
physical co-operated with these to bring it about or not. And 
lastly, what is true of a worn out world — of our moon, will be 
true of the solar system by and by ; and the last stages illustrate 
the predominance of dissolution over evolution, if not, indeed, 



278 ANTAGONISM IN EVOLUTION. [Chap. XXI I. 

the complete displacement of evolution by dissolution. Then 
evolution is a partial fact. It does not cover all the phenomena 
of life and existence, but only a portion thereof. It does not 
extend the entire length of careers, but only a part of the way. 
To be sure, Spencer teaches all this, but appears at times to over- 
look it in the optimistic haze of evolution. Evolution is a very 
great fact; it names a principle which Conflict does not and can- 
not name ; but there are immense fields of activity in individual 
life, in the life of societies, in the life of worlds, in which evo- 
lution has no part ; but there is no field in all the wide domain 
of existence in which the conflict of forces plays not evermore. 
Evolution is but one of the currents of the great stream of con- 
flict which is flowing from one eternity to the other, and bearing 
with it all things from the fathomless ocean of the past into the 
equally fathomless ocean of the future. 

Section 160. — It remains to add still another qualification — 
that concerning the possibilities of equilibration, also involving 
dissent on a vital point. Mr. Spencer believes in complete 
equilibration, or at least, in what comes indefinitely near to it. 
In regard to the conflict between conservatism and reform, he 
says : " This process now so far advanced among ourselves 
that the oscillations are comparatively unobtrusive, must go on 
till the balance between antagonist forces approaches indefinitely 
near perfection. For, as we have already seen, the adaptation 
of man's nature to the conditions of his existence, cannot cease 
until the internal forces which we know as feelings are in equi- 
librium with the external forces they encounter (470: 512). 
Also, " And the ultimate abolition of all limits to the freedom 
of each, save those imposed by the like freedom of all, must 
result from the complete equilibration between man's desires 
and the conduct necessitated by surrounding conditions." — 
(471: 513). 

If this view be correct, what the author calls perfection, 
what others call harmony, will eventually come out of the "co-ex- 
istence of attraction and repulsion " — out of antagonism every- 
where in the forces of nature. On a priori grounds this result 



SeC. l6l.'] EQUILIBRIUM. 279 

would seem to be an improbable one. This conflict between two 
opposing forces, according to our best light on the subject, as 
already stated, is the sine qua non of every form of evolution from 
the nebular condition of existence till now. All physical activ- 
ity, all life are conditioned by the play of forces not in equilib- 
rium. There is no life without motion, and motion never takes 
place but under resistance. Without conflict there can be no 
activity and no life. So far as there is any warrant in conscious- 
ness, perfect equilibrium would be absolute death, the extinc- 
tion, indeed, of all existence, even of matter itself. It is thus 
stated by a high authority in science : " Matter longs for rest ; 
when is this longing to be satisfied ? If satisfied, what then ? 
Rest is not perfection, it is death. Life is only compatible with 
mutation ; when equilibrium sets in, life ceases, and the world 
thenceforward is locked in everlasting sleep." And later : 
" Many years ago I found myself in discussion with a friend who 
entertained the notion that the general tendency of things in 
this world is toward an equilibrium of peace and blessedness to 
the human race. My notion was that equilibrium meant not 
peace and blessedness, but death." — (Tyndall). 

Still there is equilibrium in the sense of a general balance of 
forces. If, as we have reason to believe, the universe is a 
scheme of antagonistic forces, they must in a general way 
balance each other, as a necessary condition of general stability. 
Every disturbance of equilibrium must be able to recover itself, 
else there would be no assured warrant for the maintenance of 
the system. The kind of equilibrium which really exists is that 
which involves fluctuation — the equilibrium of the swinging 
pendulum or of the wave-rocked sea; and without such fluctua- 
tion, equilibrium would be quiescence and death. 

Section 161. — The conception of equilibrium is one which 
may be variously interpreted. The " moving equilibrium " is a 
form of it which is derived from mathematics; and if there 
were no irreversible changes going on in the solar system which 
will eventually bring about its destruction, it would be a perfect 
example of a moving equilibrium. But when we leave mechan- 



280 ANTAGONISM IN EVOLUTION. [Chap. XXII. 

ics and come to living things the designation is misleading, 
unless we so qualify it as to mask the usual meaning of the 
word. Mr. Spencer defines it as the "dependent moving equili- 
brium ;" but even thus qualified it is necessary to guard against 
the obtrusion of inferences which are suggested by the usual 
meaning of the word, but which are excluded by this peculiar 
use of it. 

The organism has a beginning, a career of development, and 
then it undergoes decline, and at last suffers dissolution. If we 
saw the individual organism only during the period of develop- 
ment, with its powers constantly multiplying and enlarging, we 
might predict for it a golden age, or period of perfection. It is 
held that the course through which the organism passes illus- 
trates several forms of equilibration; yet, as we have seen, it is 
a perpetual battle of forces in which dissolution always triumphs 
in the end over integration. If we saw it only in the heyday of 
its existence, as we see the solar system, we should perceive a 
gratifying average of balances, — Mr. Spencer's third form of 
equilibration. But this is equilibration only so far as a constant 
alternation between opposing forces for the most part equal, con- 
stitutes equilibrium. We are compelled here to contemplate 
the constant struggle between waste and repair; and the two 
alternate for a time, but waste always gets the upperhand, and 
comes off victor; and that is the end of the moving equilibrium. 
There is an infirmity ever present in the grain of it which insures 
its destruction. Mr. Spencer, of course, recognizes this fully 
and claims it in illustration of the fourth and last form of equili- 
bration. What we here insist upon is that these analogies of the 
" moving equilibrium," so constantly exposed to disturbance, as 
every form of it is, and most of all in society, afford no sufficient 
warrant for optimistic anticipation of the future results of evolu- 
tion, when the equilibrium between man and his environment 
is to be complete and in every way secure from painful disturb- 
ance. 

When the equilibrium of the organism appears to be most com- 
plete, the necessary waste is accompanied with more or less pain. 



Sec l6l.] THE STRUGGLE OF LIFE INVOLVES PAIN. 28 1 

Hunger must be ranked with the uneasy and somewhat painful 
feelings of the animal system; and when the organic equilibrium 
is in its best working order, the sensation of hunger is capable 
of becoming most acute. The desire for food involves pain till 
gratified; and the gratification can only come by mental and 
muscular exertion; and this exertion causes in part the waste it 
is intended to repair. The means of repairing the waste can 
only be procured by overcoming resistance; and this is attended 
with more or less pain which is only endured as the alternative 
of still greater pain in the form of ravenous hunger from the 
extreme of unrepaired waste. So far as man is concerned, he 
once depended on the uncertainties of capture, and had to watch 
or pursue, and then, perhaps, to fight in a doubtful conflict, often 
enduring without food for days, though suffering less than 
civilized man would under like circumstances. In the agricul- 
tural state there was the pain of care and labor under exposure, 
and with all the modern appliances, long hours of painful toil are 
still needful, and millions suffer daily for want of the full neces- 
saries of life. And though optimists may explain this as an 
incident of immature development, we have the authority of 
Mr. Spencer to the effect that, as the race grows older, and 
evolution further advanced, the struggle of life will be more and 
more intense, necessitating a greater expenditure of nervous 
energy, and more thoroughly exhausting the individual organism, 
even to the narrowing of its capacity for reproduction. — (Biology, 
Vol. II., Part VI.) This is not perfection, it is not harmony 
except under strain, it is not the equilibrium that brings peace, it 
is conflict with attending pain to the end. And as an indication 
that the dream of a universal, pleasure-giving equilibrium is 
incompatible with the constitution of things, it may be stated 
here briefly, to be given a little more fully in the next and other 
chapters, that, without the hardships through which the race has 
passed, man would now be a feebler creature than he is — feebler 
in both mind and body, and more at the mercy of any adverse 
incident that might affect him. It is the habit of resistance, the 
use of brain and muscle in conflict that has developed his 



282 ANTAGONISM IN EVOLUTION. [C/lOp. XXII. 

energies for all manner of achievements; and if the day ever 
comes, when the equilibrium between man and his environment 
is so complete, that he will be called upon to endure no hard- 
ships and make little exertion to beat back adversity, we may well 
question whether the result would be optimistic. On the cessa- 
tion of one form of evil a greater might befall. 

It must not be forgotten that by the very conditions of exist- 
ence, conflict and discord have prevailed from the beginning 
till now ; and that with the multiplication of effects has kept 
pace the multiplication of forms of conflict. In the nebula it 
was little more than attraction and repulsion ; just before the 
dawn of life, it was still purely physical ; and then was added 
conflict between living things, and between the animate and 
the inanimate. Still later, mind came into existence and added 
new forms of conflict, and then society developed more and 
more, and moral discord emerged into existence, ever branching 
into new and diversified features ; till now, no words can ade- 
quately portray the manifold forms of antagonism which prevail 
in the diversified constitution of things. In early times pain did 
not accompany the conflict of forces. When life had advanced 
sufficiently, pain came into existence ; — and if optimists and pes- 
simists had been there they might have quarreled then as now. 
11 See the misery that is coming into existence, and on the 
increase," says the pessimist. The optimist replies : " See the 
pleasure accompanying life and on the increase with every 
advance in evolution." Both would be right; but it is necessary 
to add the two observations together to get the whole truth. In 
our day, the pessimist says, " There is manifestly more pain 
during the present geological period than during any other, or 
indeed all others, since the world began." The optimist affirms 
the same thing of pleasure and enjoyment; — and both are right 
But when the pessimist goes further and says : " There is now 
and always has been since sentient existence began necessarily 
more pain than pleasure," he affirms what he cannot make good. 
And when the optimist says : " All this pain is but an incident 
of development to be eventually outgrown, when equilibrium, 



Sec. l6l.] QUALIFYING THE ISSUE. 283 

harmony, and happiness will reign," he affirms what is still with- 
out sufficient warrant. Then, both are wrong. 

The few preceding paragraphs may have raised a host of 
importunate suggestions which perplex and confound rather than 
satisfy. The enquiry turns mainly on this point: Is conflict 
involving pain inevitable and ineradicable ? In a preliminary 
way — to be discussed in future chapters — it may here be affirmed 
that it is. Now, granting this to be correct, then, first : It does 
not follow that pessimism is true, since conflict and discord may 
never cease, and yet there may be far more enjoyment than suf- 
fering in the world. And secondly : Although the aggregate 
of pleasure may outweigh the aggregate of pain, optimism may 
still be untrue in its assumption that pain can be wholly eradi- 
cated from existence. 



PART FIFTH. 

EVIL IN RELATION TO THE NECESSARY CONDITIONS OF LIFE. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

PARADOXES OF FEELING IN RELATION TO FUNCTION. 

Section 162. — A principle of action in relation to function 
and development, bearing on the questions we have raised, but 
always overlooked by pessimists in answering them, should here 
receive attention. It is this: Functional activity which 
strengthens and preserves the organism, is predominantly 
pleasurable. The taking of food by which the individual is 
conserved, and the union of the sexes by which the race is con- 
tinued in existence, are pleasurable acts. If they were painful 
the individual might perish for want of nourishment, and the 
race would come to an end. A certain measure of muscular 
exertion is accompanied with pleasure, as in the gambols of the 
young, and this is a condition of vital energy and muscular 
development. So rest after fatigue, and falling asleep after 
wakefulness, are pleasurable, and necessary to the restoration of 
vigor. The exercise of the several senses on their appropriate 
objects, and of every primary function in the economy of life, is 
attended throughout with organic pleasure as an essential condi- 
tion of such exercise. 



Sec. 162.] RELATION OF PLEASURE TO FUNCTION. 285 

The obverse of this is equally true. If invigorating and use- 
ful acts and influences are pleasurable, those of opposite charac- 
ter are painful. A cut, bruise, or burn, lesion of any kind, 
starvation, surfeit, freezing, overheating, breathing a vitiated 
atmosphere, all have a depressing influence on the vital energies 
and all are accompanied with pain. The loss of friends, or of 
property, disappointed hopes, any form of defeat in the conflicts 
of life, are depressing on mind and body, and are painful. 
Professor Bain generalizes a considerable body of facts as fol- 
lows: "States of pleasure are connected with an increase, and 
states of pain with abatement of some, or all, of the vital func- 
tions." — (Sens, and Int. 288). 

This is true not only of habitual function which maintains the 
integrity of the individual, but of those innovations of function 
which evolution implies. If the variation gives an advantage its 
use is attended with an addition of pleasure. Greater speed or 
strength, sharper and longer teeth and claws, keener scent, hear- 
ing, and sight, all would give additional pleasure in the exercise. 
This is not more true of physiological than of mental functions. 
Cunning, sagacity, invention, every mental acquisition which 
gives superiority in the trial of powers for which life ever affords 
the arena, would be attended in the exercise with an additional 
thrill of pleasure. The relation of pleasure to function is prob- 
ably a condition which affects the play of natural selection. 

But suppose this dual principle to be reversed, so that the 
necessary conditions of living and of evolution were accom- 
panied with pain instead of pleasure, — so that painful function 
should invigorate the system and pleasurable function weaken it, 
what would be the result ? There could be no animate existence 
under such conditions. The conception that a preponderance 
of pain was possible from the first as an intimate accompani- 
ment of vital action involves an absurdity which biology refuses 
to entertain. 

There is no conscious sensation in plants or in the lower 
animal forms ; what, then, is the guide to development in them? 
Motion in the direction of least resistance. In forms in which 



286 FEELING AND FUNCTION. [Chap. XXIII. 

conscious sensation has place, the fact that pleasure is connected 
with increase of vital function, indicates that such function is 
essentially but a higher form of the principle in physics and in 
the lower organic realm, that .motion takes place in the direction 
of least resistance. Any deviation would meet with greater 
resistance, that is, with pain or less pleasure ; hence in the avoid- 
ance of painful and the election of the most pleasurable sensa- 
tions, actions are guided along the channel of easiest movement, 
and the greatest possible pleasure is the leading motive of 
organic action. The child at first has little directive control of 
its movements, but by experience it makes a double acquisition; 
for while it learns to direct its muscular movements toward 
particular objects, it learns to direct them in such way as to avoid 
pain and find pleasure. The morsels of food which it brings to 
its mouth give pleasure, and it elects to repeat the action ; if 
they gave pain it would soon choose to let them alone. These 
primitive determinations of will by experience illustrate the law 
of motion in the direction of least resistance, in that they follow 
the lead of pleasure to those actions which contribute to the 
welfare of the individual. 

Section 163. — In close connection with this principle, is there 
a general fact of social life which has a very important bearing 
in relation to the predominance of happiness among mankind. 
People with the cheerful, happy temperament are more attract- 
ive than the morose and gloomy, and by consequence usually 
marry younger, thus adding to the proportion of people with 
happy dispositions. The phenomenon resolves itself essentially 
into the increase of buoyancy and vigor through the pleasurable 
exercise of the affections. If it were more prevailing than it is, 
the world would be still more largely the gainer. If all were 
endowed with that elasticity of temper which always springs 
back whatever the vicissitudes of fortune, the ills of life would 
count for less than they do. 

This principle has operated no doubt among civilized and 
mixed peoples more than among the more primitive types of 
simpler and less divergent mental mold. But, while it has cut 



Sec. 164.] STIMULANTS. 287 

off to a certain extent the depressed and unsocial, and increased 
those abounding in sympathy and animal spirits, it has also cut 
down the proportion of the more intellectual and prudent who 
are more likely than those of the opposite mental cast to enter 
wedlock later in life. Still, no doubt, the principle has contrib- 
uted quite largely among civilized peoples to the general sum 
of happiness. 

This general fact of the pleasure of organic function in all its 
modes of manifestation whether for the ends of the individual 
or the race, appears to be wholly at variance with pessimism 
which teaches that there is necessarily more pain than pleasure 
in existence. But if the greater pleasure of function adds to 
the proportion of the buoyant and happy, and if the organic 
experience which invigorates is pleasurable, and that which 
enfeebles usually painful, all this goes to the support of optim- 
ism, in that it indicates a great preponderance of pleasure over 
pain. But at the same time it gives no support to the optim- 
istic fancy than pain is incidental and destined to be outgrown. 
Any suspicion that it points to the negative and incidental char- 
acter of discord and pain must quite disappear as groundless, 
under a further consideration of facts which relate to organic 
life. 

Section 164. — There are a number of stimulants attended 
with the pleasures of sense in the taking, but which are liable to 
injure, and even to destroy the organism. Alcohol, tobacco, 
opium, hashish, chloral, tea, and others partake more or less of 
this character. It may be that some of them, when taken in 
moderation, illustrate the law that what invigorates gives pleas- 
ure; but what is fatal to the application of the law in such cases, 
is that the pleasure of taking tempts to pass the bounds of 
moderation, and ruin follows in the wake of excess. Animals 
generally avoid deleterious plants, but sometimes even they err, 
and misled by their tastes, partake too freely of what proves 
destructive even of life. And when this is the case, when 
death supervenes upon use, it is not possible for an instinct 
against its use to be organized in the race on the principle of 



288 FEELING AND FUNCTION. [Chap. XXI II 

heredity. And in regard to man, the adverse experience con- 
nected with the abuse of narcotic stimulants, seems to profit the 
race but little; and the seductive pleasure accompanying their 
use proves to be too strong a temptation for the remonstrances 
of reason. A tonic stimulant like quinine may be offensive to 
the taste, though it is strengthening; while a poison may be 
pleasant to the palate, but fatal to the system, so, the general fact 
that what invigorates is pleasurable, and what enfeebles disagree- 
able, has exceptions in which pleasure leads to ruin, while the 
painful is conservative; — and optimism is at fault. 

But there is still another class of facts to be considered in this 
connection which is more fatally opposed to the optimistic view 
of the transient nature of evil. 

Section 165. — While life could not be maintained if its 
primary functions were not pleasurable rather than painful, yet 
is it a well-founded conviction that pleasure is debilitating, and 
hardship invigorating. This is, of course, a somewhat different 
sense of the word pleasure, having reference to its too great 
prevalence to the perversion of function. Nor is the word hard- 
ship synonymous with pain, since it has reference more especially 
to feelings in connection with the indirect functions of life. 
Pleasure beyond certain limits is debilitating, and hardship within 
certain limits is invigorating; organic experience which is invig- 
orating, is also pleasurable, while organic experience which is 
debilitating, is painful. These are physiological paradoxes, every 
whit true in their proper place; and without due recognition of 
them, we should not understand life. 

The taking of food is pleasurable, so much so that in some 
animals it appears to be attended with an enjoyment amounting 
almost to ecstasy ; but beyond the limits of satiety it becomes 
painful. The procuring of food, however, a more indirect func- 
tion of life, is less marked in its emotional characteristics. 
Under certain circumstances it may be pleasurable, but it is 
very liable to be attended with pain. When food is scarce, even 
animals in a state of nature are compelled to undergo hardships 
in order to procure the needful supply, — unrewarded watching 



Sec. 165.] REPUGNANCE OF LABOR. 289 

and fatiguing hunts, suffering at the same time from the pangs of 
hunger, and weakened by protracted fasting. But it is with 
man that we are more especially concerned. Since the very 
beginning of his existence man's chief concern has been for a 
sufficient supply of food. And in a general way, this supply has 
only been procured at the expense of pleasure and ease. The 
fatigue and danger of hunting, together with its uncertainties; 
the exposure and hard labor of agricultural life in early times; 
the unhealthiness and repulsiveness of a large portion of the 
necessary occupations of civilized life, all testify to the necessary 
hardships of procuring sustenance. There is of course a certain 
pleasure in labor, or rather in certain kinds of labor. One form 
of its pleasure is negative, inasmuch as it gives relief from ennui; 
but the mere sense of doing is accompanied with a positive 
pleasure which most people feel. Even if originally and essen- 
tially repugnant, generations of habit would necessarily have some 
result in allying pleasure with work. But doubtless this form of 
pleasure is mainly or wholly derived by association from what 
is gained by labor, and belongs properly to its results rather than 
to the labor itself. Little work would be done but for the 
necessities which make it compulsory. As Adam Smith puts it, 
the laborer "always lays down " a " portion of his ease, his lib- 
erty, and his happiness." And he further affirms that, "In 
every profession, the exertion of the greater part of those who 
exercise it, is always in proportion to the necessity they are 
under of making that exertion." In answer to the question, 
"Why does the laborer work?" Francis A. Walker replies, 
" Clearly that he may eat. If he may eat without it, he will not 
work." Amasa Walker declares that "man's work is man's want 
active," and that, " Labor is always irksome. This is the law. 
Men do not voluntarily put forth their exertions, except for a 
reward." But it is not necessary to quote authorities in support 
of this view ; every man's experience confirms it, if not engaged 
in merely artistic work which is not properly expressed by the 
word labor. 

Life then is far from depending wholly on what is pleasurable; 



290 FEELING AND FUNCTION. \Chop. XXIII. 

but mankind choose to undergo the hardships of labor and self- 
denial rather than let life go by default. The like is true of the 
animal races; the stimulus of hunger impels them to exertion, 
be it ever so painful, to allay the still greater pain of hunger. 
Man is more calculating. He knows without personal experi- 
ence that hunger, emaciation, exquisite torture are only kept in 
abeyance by an adequate supply of food. Everything in life 
depends on this supply. Hence, primarily, it is a choice between 
evils, that of starvation on the one hand, and that of overcoming 
repugnance for such supply on the other. But since a suffi- 
ciency of food is the sine qua non of all the enjoyments of life, 
the pains of securing the supply are endured with equanimity, 
as the inevitable price of the enjoyment. 

Section 166. — There are several points of especial interest to 
be noted here. First, it is to these very hardships which living 
necessitates that man owes his vigor of constitution. "Difficul- 
ties strengthen the mind as labor strengthens the body." — (Sen- 
eca). In genial climates where the means of life are to be had 
with little exertion, and where the climate itself is unfavorable 
to exertion, man is feebler in both mind and body than in 
regions where it is necessary to put forth exertion. The har- 
diest peoples have grown up in temperate climates, where the 
rigor of winter alternates with the warmth of summer, and 
industry is indispensable to the adequate supply of food and 
shelter. Too much hardship like too much indolence enfeebles, 
as the condition of arctic and tropical peoples proves. 

Secondly: To exertion thus put forth under the stimulus of 
want, is man indebted, not only for vigor of body and health of 
mind, but for development of mind as well. If he were not 
compelled to devise ways and means, and to exert himself in 
carrying them out, he would everywhere be a feeble and stolid 
creature ; and habits of mental torpitude would prevent the 
development of his mental faculties. Under mere pleasure- 
seeking and the indulgence of ease, the mind becomes listless 
as the muscles become flabby. Use, exercise is indispensable 
not only to prevent degeneracy, but to promote the still further 



Sec. l66.] LABOR THE CONDITION OF ALL GOOD. 29 1 

development of mind. The birth of new powers constituting 
evolution comes only through the pains of labor. The testi- 
mony of Herbert Spencer on this point is explicit. He declares 
that if it were not for the necessity of contrivance and exertion 
which the struggle of life entails, "growth of mental power would 
not take place. Difficulty in getting a living is alike the incen- 
tive to a higher education of children, and to a more intense and 
long-continued application in adults. In the mother it induces 
foresight, economy, and skilful housekeeping; in the father, 
laborious days and constant self-denial. Nothing but necessity 
could make men submit to this discipline; and nothing but this 
discipline could produce a continued progression." — (Biology, 
II. , 499). 

Beyond this, thirdly, there is still another result : But for this 
necessary exertion there could be no social development 
Through the labor of invigorated muscles in connection with the 
devices of improved intellect comes the supply of food necessary 
for the increase of numbers; and this increase of numbers ren- 
ders possible and necessary the higher form of society which we 
know as civilization. Then, the resistance overcome, the hard- 
ship endured in procuring food for sustenance, and clothing and 
habitations for protection against the vicissitudes of climate, are 
the necessary conditions of all that is great in the history of 
man. They have invigorated the body, developed the intellect, 
and brought civilization into existence. What was pronounced 
on Adam and Eve as a curse is found to be the condition of 
all human good. Under the necessary constitution of things, 
without the inconveniences and hardships, the good could not 
have been. This is neither optimism nor pessimism. 

A query very naturally suggests itself here : If the highest 
that we observe in man has been achieved only through the 
labor of overcoming resistance, is this to be the order of things 
for all time to come ? Or is there to be a condition of things 
when life will be wholly pleasurable, or, as Spencer puts it, when 
there will be equilibrium between man and his environment? 
And if life should become wholly pleasurable, what would be its 



292 FEELING AND FUNCTION. [C/iap. XXIII. 

effects on man ? If the law of development has been through- 
out all man's previous existence, that he could only maintain his 
vigor of mind and body by the exertion necessary to overcome 
difficulties, will not degeneracy immediately supervene when 
there are no more difficulties to encounter? 

Section 167. — Since the above was written Spencer's Data of 
Ethics has been published. In this work the transformation of 
repugnant duties into pleasures by the necessary and natural 
action of the forces of evolution is insisted upon with optimistic 
emphasis. The author believes that " the re-molding of human 
nature into fitness for the requirements of social life, must eventu- 
ally make all needful activities pleasurable." The canons of 
political economy are to be reversed, and work heretofore 
deemed repugnant is to become attractive. Men will no longer 
work because they must, but because they love to work, if, 
indeed, on that happy day it will be regarded as work. Such an 
idea does away with the essential meaning of labor and all its 
connotations. It is a sort of a priori dream proceeding from the 
fragrant atmosphere of the artistic studio ; and not from the 
dingy mine, the scorching field, the routine shop. One whose 
ancestors have always had to labor, year in and year out in order 
to live, and who is now compelled, himself, to follow in their 
footsteps, and who after weary years of toil, realizes how little 
the persistency of the habit has done to turn work into pleasure, 
could not indulge this a p?'iori dream, except by contrast. His 
estimate of the essential character of work is a posteriori ; and 
in his visions of the future, work is still repugnance overcome, 
and the good it brings is bought with a price which must be 
paid. In economics the price is given as the equivalent for use. 
As in chemistry, hydrogen is H-H, and oxygen O-O, so in soci- 
ology is living coupled with labor, L-L, and wants supplied 
inevitably linked with work done, W-W ; and neither term can 
exist alone, each being the counterpart of its fellow, and their 
union necessary to integrity. 

A consideration in behalf of the claims of labor for reward is 
that it is repugnance overcome. It is admitted that whoever 



Sec. l6/ . ] LABOR THE PRICE OF ENJOYMENT. 293 

practices the self-denial which work and business require, should 
receive fitting reward for such self-denial. This idea lies at the 
basis of all industrial virtue. If labor and business are to 
become unmixed pleasure, the fundamental principles, not only 
of all economy, but of all thought and feeling in relation to life, 
will be overturned. " There is nothing gratuitous in physical 
nature," says Tyndall, " no gain without equivalent expenditure." 
Precisely the same is true in the moral world. This law has 
shaped the very being of man, and all that he has ever gained 
he has paid well for ; and it is forever true that every pleasure 
has its price. And if it is not paid for in advance in the legal 
tender of nature, the inevitable mortgage is sure to be foreclosed 
at last, and the victim learns too late that what he thought clear 
gain has made him a moral bankrupt. 

The idea that all necessary work may be pleasurable like 
rowing or the chase, seems to overlook cardinal principles, not 
only in man, but in nature, of which man is a part. We may 
judge something of the pleasurable character of action in relation 
to what man always has been, by what in former times the "lords" 
chose to do themselves, and what they made their slaves and 
their women do. They hunted and went to war, and made 
their slaves do the work. So Indians and savages generally 
pursue the chase and make their women attend to the drudg- 
eries of life. Games of skill, speed, and strength, the chase, 
battle, all involve the conflict-element in a lively sense, and 
answer to one of the most fundamental proclivities of the 
human constitution, while tame, drudging labor does nothing of 
the kind. The boy who thinks it a cross to hoe corn or pota- 
toes will beg for the privilege of riding a colt even at the peril 
of his neck and with far greater exertion than the despised 
labor requires. The wilder the animal the greater the zest of 
bringing him into subjection. It has a great advantage in inter- 
est over humdrum labor. It gratifies the deep-seated love of 
conquest with the glory of victory — a passion which is older 
even than man. 

The claim of pleasure for the necessary labors of the future, 
14 



2 94 FEELING AND FUNCTION. [C/tClp. XXIII. 

involves mental conditions which are nothing less than psychologi- 
cal degeneracy. Imagine the future man delighted with the 
monotonous industries which civilization has engendered, and 
which it will doubtless engender still more through invention 
and the division of labor ! A refined being happy while he 
clears away accumulations of filth, mines the coal and metals, 
cultivates cotton under a southern sun, works in the heat of the 
furnace, or stands faithfully at his monotonous duty in the mill ! 
It is "inconceivable," and therefore to be condemned by Mr. 
Spencer's own ultimate test of truth ! 

The division of labor which is still going on is fatal to the 
notion of its future pleasurableness. A peculiarity of industrial 
tendency is that while it is developing multiplicity and diversity 
for the race, it is developing monotony and weariness for the 
individual laborer. The efficiency of modern industry requires 
this sacrifice of the individual's tastes for diversity and change. 
The antithesis and paradox of the situation are well hit off in 
few words by Amasa Walker : " By the division of labor the 
independence of each is sacrificed to the good of all." Pro 
fessor Luthard, of Germany, testifies : " Work is specialized 
and therefore degraded, so that men cannot be complete in their 
vocation, but seek compensation in sensuous enjoyment, and 
the statistics of crimes of animal indulgence have rapidly 
increased." Roscher, the German economist, exclaims: "What 
must be the aspect of the soul of a workman who, for forty 
years, has done nothing but watch the moment when silver has 
reached the degree of fusion which precedes vaporization ! who 
is blind to all else, but receives a good fat salary for his ser- 
vices?" Schliermacher rightly declared "all human action which 
is purely mechanical, through which man becomes a living tool 
(slave) immoral. . . . The morality of a profes- 
sion may be measured by the degree in which it corresponds 
with the universal calling of the race. . . . There 
is nothing more ruinous than premature, one-sided education in 
a single trade or profession." 

But let us admit that the future man will be healthy, and 



Sec. 167.] REPUGNANCE TO LABOR INERADICABLE. 295 

pleased, and happy in the discharge of such industrial functions 
as civilization is multiplying: then, what kind of a creature must 
he be? So completely transformed that we can no longer 
consider him as hopefully human. To receive pleasure from 
such labors on their own account would imply on the part of the 
laborer a stolid simplicity of mind bordering upon idiocy. Such 
emotional reversion could only take place by curtailing man's 
higher traits of character; and if the habit of performing this 
kind of work can only become pleasing through the atrophy of 
the best elements of manhood, it may be well if the repugnance 
of labor cannot be transformed into agreeableness. It may be 
even better that it shall become more repugnant through the 
necessary degeneracy of labor by division, and the more general 
moral improvement, if possible, of the laborers. And while it 
is probably true that labor must always be repugnant, we believe 
it is better that mankind shall settle down into the conviction 
that all the good things of life have their price, and that the 
more there are of these good things the greater the purchase 
money that must be given. Labor is the necessary means to 
ends, ana! in its very repugnance it is the cause of incidental and 
far reaching good. In its compensation it is linked with the 
hope of emotional reward, and there is no reason, when the 
sacrifice is not too great, why it should not be performed with 
nerve and a reasonable degree of cheerfulness. 

Fourier has not left this subject so fully in the glitter of optim- 
istic generalities, but comes with it courageously to the perilous 
ground ot detail. He would make labor pleasurable by turning 
it into play through the fascination of sociability and change; 
but the answer to this is its impracticability, more clearly to be 
seen now in the light of modern industries than when Fourier 
wrote. Fourier's Phalanstery like Plato's Republic belongs to 
the region of the ideal. Spencer's transformation of labor into 
pleasure belongs to the same category. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

MAN'S ENVIRONMENT — GEOLOGICAL CONDITIONS. 

Section 168. — On the nebular hypothesis, if true, there was 
geological conflict as soon as the cooling of the earth had 
advanced sufficiently for the formation of water and of a solid 
crust above water with a shore-line. Then began the war of the 
land and the sea which has been so prolific of results in the his- 
tory of our planet. There has been a ceaseless conflict of the 
elements on the land and under it, in the waters, and in the 
atmosphere ; and this many-sided conflict still persists. 

On the land, water in the forms of rain, springs, torrents, 
rivers, currents, tides, snow, ice, is working to one result ; while 
the internal fires of the earth in the forms of volcanoes, earth- 
quakes, and the subsidence and elevation of continental tracts 
are working to the opposite result. The unopposed action of 
the aqueous forces would reduce the surface of the earth to a 
dead level by wearing away the higher portions and filling up the 
lower ; but the constant action of volcanic forces preserves the 
inequalities of the earth's surface by raising it in one place and 
sinking it in another. 

The great carriers of sedimentary spoils from the higher to 
lower places are the rivers. The area of the delta at the mouths 
of the Ganges and Brahmapootra is two hundred and fifty miles 
in length by eighty miles in width. Beyond this the sediment 
is carried far out into the bay and thrown down on an area 
reckoned to be three hundred miles east and west and one hun- 
dred and fifty miles north and south. The entire area, there- 
fore, over which these two rivers are spreading their freight of 



Sec. l6£.] DENUDING THE EARTH'S SURFACE. ' 297 

sediment is sixty-five thousand square miles. It is estimated 
that these two rivers carry down annually about forty billion 
cubic feet of sediment. This is five hundred and thirty-three 
times the bulk of the great pyramid of Egypt, which covers 
eleven acres and is five hundred feet high. It would make a 
range of hills the size of this pyramid and set base to base more 
than one hundred and thirty-three miles long. And supposing 
that the sediment transported by these two rivers is five per cent. 
of that which is transported by all the rivers of the world, then 
would the aggregate of the sediment thus annually delivered be 
equal to a range of such hills more than two thousand six hun- 
dred and sixty miles in length equal to a quadruple range extend- 
ing from the city of Washington to New Brunswick. 

The action of large bodies of water in the form of waves, 
tides, and currents, assists the rivers in their work of wearing 
away the continents. While they are eating away the shore at 
almost all points, they also take the fine sediment brought down 
by the rivers, and carry it far out into the deeper waters. Oppo- 
site the mouths of the rivers already named, at high water, the 
bay is turbid at the surface more than sixty miles from the shore. 
M. Agassiz believed that a breadth of three hundred miles has 
been torn from the land at the mouth of the Amazon. It is 
estimated that the Alleghany mountains retain not more than 
half the bulk they once had, the rest having been swept to lower 
levels and carried to the bottom of the sea (Dana). All the 
older mountains of the earth have disappeared from this cause; 
only those remain which had their origin in comparatively recent 
geological times (Judd). Not only mountains are going, but 
valleys as well. It is estimated that over a large part of the 
Mississippi valley, the surface looses by erosion as much as a 
foot in a century (Shaler). "Speaking in general terms, we may 
say that the entire mass constituting all the mountains and con- 
tinents, of a mean elevation of one thousand feet above the 
level of the sea, has been diminished by an amount of material 
sufficient to fill up an abyss six times the depth of the ocean." — 
(Prof. George Pilar, Smithsonian Report, 1876, p. 305). Accord- 



298 GEOLOGICAL CONDITIONS. [Chap. XXIV. 

ing to the calculations of Croll, the whole American continent 
would be worn down to the level of the sea in about four millions 
years at the present rate of denudation, if there were no conti- 
nental elevations to counteract the effect. It was the opinion 
of Herschel that if the earth had begun in its present form, 
the levelling forces would have put all the dry land under water 
long ago. Judd (Volcanoes, 287) affirms it to be a "well estab- 
lished fact that the denuding forces ever at work upon the 
earth's surface would have been competent to the removal of 
existing continents many times over, in the vast periods covered 
by geological records." 

The effect of rivers, tides, and currents, does not in all 
instances cause a loss to the dry land equal to the sediment they 
remove. By the silting up of shallows and the formation of 
deltas, the area of land is, in many localities, gaining on that of 
the water. At the mouth of the Po the land is gaining on the 
gulf at the rate of one mile in a century; and at the mouth of 
the Nile, the delta has probably pushed itself one hundred miles 
into the Mediterranean, with a base of two hundred miles, while 
at the same time the bed of the river is rising and its flood 
waters extending over a wider area, in consequence of which 
the alluvial soil is encroaching on the desert. Rivers which 
once emptied by different mouths have become united through 
the constant accession to the land which they have themselves 
effected. The Po and the Adige, the Ganges and the Brahma- 
pootra, the Red River and the Mississippi, the Tigris and the 
Euphrates, are given as examples. To the general effect of 
reducing the area of dry land, the levelling tendencies of the 
water have, therefore, the counter effect of adding to the area 
of dry land; but this is to be regarded as an indirect result 
which the denuding agencies, if not counteracted, would event- 
ually overcome. 

Thus, while the countless streams all over the earth, together 
with the waves, tides, and currents of the great bodies of water 
are bringing about the ruin of the existing world, these self-same 
streams and the rains which feed them are necessary to the 



Sec. l6<p.~\ VOLCANOES AND EARTHQUAKES. 299 

existence of life on the planet The means of present life are 
the means of ultimate destruction. The aqueous agency which 
makes organic existence possible on the dry land, if not met by 
counter agencies, would, in the end, destroy the physical condi- 
tions of organic life. The aqueous conditions of life on land are 
thus destructive of the land-conditions of life. The agency is 
self-negating as regards the existence of higher forms, and if not 
prevented by a counteracting force, it would defeat its own util- 
ity. 

Section 169. — Volcanoes bring matter up from the interior 
of the earth and throw it on the surface. In an eruption of 
Scaptor Jokul, Iceland, in 1783, the volume of matter thrown to 
the surface was greater than the whole of Mt. Blanc. Even twice 
as great as this, it has been estimated, is the volume of scoriae 
and ashes thrown in 181 5 from a volcano in the Island of Sum- 
bawa. By this force have mountains and vast tracts of country 
been permanently elevated. In 1759, on the plain of Malpais, 
in Mexico, six volcanic peaks were formed, the lowest of which 
is three hundred feet, and the highest sixteen hundred feet, 
above the original surface. An extent of country in Chili, more 
than twice the area of the State of Ohio, was lifted up several 
feet during the earthquake of 1822 — a mass of matter greater 
than that which is carried to the sea in ten years by all the 
rivers of the earth. Islands have been permanently formed in 
this way several hundred feet above the surface. Most oceanic 
islands are formed of volcanic rocks. Mountain ranges are the 
product of two opposing forces, the volcanic which lifts up and 
the aqueous which wears down and carries away. The aqueous 
agencies are the sculptors of the mountains as well as of the 
earth's surface in general 

Earthquakes cause depressions as well as elevations. During 
the earthquakes along the Mississippi in 1811-12, a tract of 
country eighty miles in length by thirty miles in breadth was 
depressed several feet. During the earthquake of Jamaica, in 
1692, the buildings in the harbor sunk fifty feet. In the earth- 
quake of Calabria, the quay of Messina sank below the surface of 



300 GEOLOGICAL conditions. [Chap. XXIV. 

the water; while in that of Lisbon, 1775, tne new marble quay 
sank into the water more than a hundred fathoms. 

Besides the changes of level produced by volcanoes and the 
shock of earthquakes, there are elevations and subsidences of 
extensive tracts slowly and insensibly taking place. There is 
evidence of the gradual elevation of the Andes, "beginning 
with times antecedent to the deposition of the oolitic and cre- 
taceous formation of Chili, and continuing to the historical 
epoch. It appears that some of the parallel ridges which com- 
pose the Cordilleras, instead of being contemporaneous, were 
successively and slowly upheaved at widely different epochs. 
The whole range after twice subsiding some thousands of feet, 
was brought up again by a slow movement in mass during the 
era of the Eocene tertiary formations, after which the whole 
sank down once more several hundred feet, to be again lifted to 
its present level by a slow and often interrupted movement." — 
(Lyell's Prin., 170, on authority of Darwin). These evidences 
of alternate elevation and subsidence of immense tracts of 
country, many times repeated in the remote past, are constantly 
coming to light in the course of recent investigations, as shown 
by the later reports of our own State geological surveys. In our 
own times certain archipelagoes in the Pacific, also Scandinavia 
embracing thousands of square miles, are subject to gradual 
upheaval. The shore at North Cape is rising at the rate of about 
five feet in a century. Greenland, the shores of Germany, the 
islands of Denmark and Norway, and a part of the coral islands 
in the Pacific and Indian oceans are as certainly subject to grad- 
ual subsidence. Candia has risen at the west end, and sunk at 
the east end till the houses may be seen under water. The 
eastern shore of North America from Labrador to Delaware, 
and in less degree even as far as Florida, has been slowly sink- 
ing for hundreds of years. " Exact observation has proved that 
almost every part of the earth's surface is either rising or fall- 
ing."— (Judd). 

Where the area of dry land would be extended at the mouths 
of great rivers, it is prevented in some instances from doing so, 



Sec. l6p.] ELEVATION AND SUBSIDENCE. 301 

not only by the action of the waves, but by constant subsidence. 
The delta deposits at the mouths of the Po and the Ganges are 
several hundred feet deep, and the character of the strata com- 
posing them, as revealed by the artesian auger, proves that por- 
tions once at the surface are now several hundred feet below. 
The delta of the Indus sank several feet during the earthquake 
of 18 1 9, and two thousand square miles of low land was sub- 
merged. In such cases the subterranean force co-operates with 
the waves against the action of streams forming deltas, to reduce 
the area of land above the level of the sea. But where, instead 
of sinking, the action is an elevating one, as in the north of 
Europe and on the coast of Chili, the sediment thrown down by 
the rivers in the shallow waters near the shore goes to extend 
the area of dry land. 

With regard to keeping good the quantity of dry land, eleva- 
tion or subsidence has precisely opposite effects in the event of 
taking place under the land or under the water. Subsidence 
under the ocean is equivalent to a rise in the land; and up. 
heaval, if not offset by depression elsewhere under the water, 
would be equivalent to a subsidence of the land. Subsidence 
of the bottom of the ocean and elevation of the land along 
shore co-operate to increase the area of dry land, while eleva- 
tion of the bottom of the ocean and the sinking of islands or 
continental tracts, diminish it. 

Owing to the co-operation of these forces, — the denudation 
of the land and its transportation to the sea, the action of waves 
on the shore, — and the elevation and subsidence of tracts of the 
earth's surface, sea and land in many or all of those tracts have 
many times changed places. And some of these agencies may 
have been more powerful and attended with greater violence in 
times past than at present. If it be true, for example, that the 
tides were immensely greater in early geological ages than at 
present, owing to the greater proximity of the moon (Ball, Popu- 
lar Science Monthly, February, 1882), it follows that the rapidity 
with which the destruction of continents and the accumulation 
of sediment at the bottom of the ocean were then going on, is 



302 GEOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS. [Chap. XXIV. 

entirely beyond the estimates which are based on the present 
action of these agencies. But they are still very active and 
capable of great results. Charles Darwin has observed that, 
"Daily is it forced home on the mind of the geologist that noth- 
ing, not even the wind that blows, is so unstable as the crust of 
the earth." 

Section 170. — Not only is the water system of the earth, 
from the ocean which supplies the vapor to the clouds which 
distil it in rain, necessary, on existing soil, to the higher orders 
of life, but the soil itself owes its existence originally to this 
same water system. If it were not for the moisture which exists 
in the atmosphere as vapor and falls as rain, to permeate the 
pores of the rocks, freezing and thawing would not disintegrate 
these solid masses and change them into soil. But without the 
lifting forces there would have been no rocks to disintegrate, 
and without the continuance of upheaval, the soil formed by 
aqueous agencies would be carried by the same agencies and 
thrown into the sea; consequently, the antagonism of the 
aqueous and igneous forces co-operating to the same end, is 
absolutely necessary to the habitable condition of the earth. 
But this good cannot come about without accompanying evil. 

The rains could not descend, nor the ice and snow melt, the 
streams could not collect and descend from the mountains into 
the plains, without incidental violence and destruction. And 
subterranean forces equal to the lifting of continents cannot act 
without terrific violence, and destruction of life, and often of the 
labor of ages. Cities have been shaken down and covered up 
with hot ashes and burning lava. Populous neighborhoods, 
beautiful countries have been desolated; and from first to last 
every living form has been made to suffer, — the fishes in the seas 
and rivers, the birds and beasts of the forests, domesticated 
animals, and man, savage and civilized. The ruin from floods 
may have been less terrific, but hardly less extensive; and when 
earthquake-shock and sea combine to overwhelm the shore with 
an immense wave, hundreds of thousands sometimes perish in a 
moment. 



SeC. ITO.~\ THE EVIL WITH THE GOOD. 303 

The same agencies which do the good and make earth habit- 
able, do the mischief and torture the inhabitants. If we have 
the good, if we have sentient existence at all, there is no getting 
rid of the evil except by perpetual miracle. So far as we 
can see, judging from the past and present, if the earth is to con- 
tinue habitable for the higher classes of beings, these violent 
forces will continue to mix their evil with their good. Their 
good and evil are " united from one head," — so often do the 
phenomena of nature remind us of Plato's conception of pleas- 
ure and pain. 

Constant change is impressed on the face of the planet — change 
incessantly promoted by these conflicting forces — change as the 
result of indispensable activities — change which man himself is 
doing much to complicate ; therefore, must change constantly 
take place in the inhabitants of the planet to adapt them to the 
ever-changing conditions of life; and this change can only take 
place by the excision of the inflexible which refuses to conform 
to the requirements of adaptation. Through this ordeal more 
or less painful, -higher organization with keener enjoyment may 
come hereafter than ever before, but there is no paradise on 
earth for mankind, since the physical conditions of life are 
dependent on forces which cannot be rid of essential vio- 
lence and its necessary accompaniment of pain. According to 
this view of geological conflict, extreme optimism is at fault, 
while at the same time pessimism is not necessarily sustained. 
The good obviously far outweighs the evil. This appears to be 
true even in the districts most exposed to catastrophe, if the 
deliberate acts of multitudes of people are to be accepted as 
evidence of their preferences. 

The case of Torre del Greco, situated on the flank of Mt. 
Vesuvius, is to the point. The world is still roomy, and if all 
the country within a hundred miles of the volcano were sunk 
into the sea, and the inhabitants saved, they could find plenty of 
places elsewhere for homes. But the flanks of the mountain are 
very fertile, and people choose to live in the dangerous vicinity 
of the volcano. Streams of lava have frequently run through 



304 GEOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS. \Chap. XXIV, 

the streets of Torre del Greco, and a part of the city has been 
incrusted in solid rock. At one time four hundred people 
were destroyed, at another three thousand, yet the lava is quar- 
ried to erect new buildings on the site of the old, and fifteen 
thousand people persist in making their homes here. But this 
is no marvel; it is a common-place of habit and hope. If man 
be a part of nature there may be fascination for him even in the 
imminence of the terrible. Man finds within himself the counter- 
part to the conflict which rages in the external world around him; 
and possibly such are the paradoxes of existence, if it were not 
for the chances of suffering from physical evils which threaten 
him, he would be less happy than he is. It may be a compen- 
sation for necessary evil that by contrast it gives h.'m additional 
zest for the good he may strive to win. 

Section 171. — Thomas Burnet lived too early to profit by a 
geological education, He was opposed to a planet with a rough 
face on it. His two volumes on the Sacred Theory of the Earth 
was "writ with a sincere intention to justify the doctrines of the 
universal deluge, and a paradisiacal state, and protect them from 
the cavils of those that are no well-wishers to sacred history." 
He deposes "that the face of the earth before the deluge was 
smooth, regular, and uniform; without^nountains and without 
a sea." "In this smooth earth were the first scenes of the world, 
and the first generations of mankind; it had the beauty of youth 
and blooming nature, fresh and fruitful, and not a wrinkle, scar, 
or fracture in all its body; no rocks nor mountains, no hollow 
caves, nor gaping channels, but even and uniform all over. And 
the smoothness of the earth made the face of the heavens so 
too; the air was calm and serene; none of those tumultuary 
motions and conflicts of vapors, which the mountains and the 
winds cause in ours; 'twas suited to a golden age, and to the first 
innocency of nature." — (Vol. I., pp. 72, 89). Such a world would 
be a perpetual miracle; but of course no "well-disposed" critic 
would have urged this against the sacred theory of the earth in 
view of the author's excellent intentions. Theologians have 
long taught the doctrine which Dr. Thomas Dick allied with his 



Sec. If '2, ,] USE OF EARTHQUAKES AND VOLCANOES. 305 

popular expositions of science, that the earth had become a the- 
ater of violence in consequence of man's fallen condition. Bur- 
net thought it all right till the flood came and tore it up. John 
Wesley, who was at a loss to find use for earthquakes and volca- 
noes in the economy of nature, attributed to them the moral 
purpose of impressing man with a proper sense of God's power; 
and the Rev. Gisborne evinced wonderful keenness of insight in 
regarding earthquakes as the divine means of vindictive justice! 
However well meant, these theological explanations of the 
difficulties concerning the physical discordances of our planet 
cannot be regarded as altogether happy; the scientific is far 
more satisfactory. Lyell states it in this way, "That the con- 
stant repair of the land and the subserviency of our planet to 
the support of terrestrial as well as aquatic species are secured 
by the elevating and depressing power of causes acting in the 
interior of the earth ; which although so often the source of 
death and terror to the inhabitants of the globe, visiting in suc- 
cession every zone, and filling the earth with monuments of ruin 
and disorder, are nevertheless the agents of a conservative prin- 
ciple above all others essential to the stability of the system." 
-(Prin. 565). 



CHAPTER XXV. 

MAN'S ENVIRONMENT — ATMOSPHERIC AND OCEANIC CURRENTS. 

Section 172. — The conditions of antagonism which prevail 
among the elements of air and ocean are so manifestly identical 
with the conditions of life that their study in this connection is 
full of significance. 

The Gulf stream has long been the vexed theme of scientific 
inquiry and hypothesis ; and it is still far from being understood. 
Indications of its origin may be found in the Atlantic east of the 



306 currents. [Chap. XXV. 

Antilles, and thence through the Caribbean sea into the Gulf of 
Mexico, from which the Gulf stream proper issues. It passes 
around Florida, turns to the northward, keeping near the coast 
of the United States, to Newfoundland, whence it turns to the 
eastward, and crosses the Atlantic to the western coast of Europe, 
having sent a branch toward the coast of Africa, and further on 
sending another branch toward the coast of Greenland, the main 
stream proceeding northward to the Polar sea. The stream 
becomes slower, wider, and shallower as it proceeds. It stops 
far short of Europe as a distinctive stream, but the waters con- 
tinue to drift on, and again reappear as a stream in the arctic 
regions. The water of the stream is warmer than that through 
which it flows ; and its volume three thousand times greater than 
that of the Mississippi river. On account of its greater warmth 
it is the messenger of benignity wherever it goes ; and by its 
genial influence on Western Europe it has made possible the 
course which modern civilization has taken. Mr. Croll has cal- 
culated that the waters of the North Atlantic would be several 
degrees below freezing were it not for the Gulf stream; but it 
has its evil genius ; storms love to follow it, and rage along its 
course. 

There is a current along the western shore of Africa to the 
equator, and thence westward across the Atlantic to Cape St. 
Roque, where it separates, one branch following the coast line 
southwardly, the other following it northwardly toward the Car- 
ibbean sea. It is believed that the waters of the Atlantic have 
a circular motion to the northward along our shore, thence east- 
ward to Europe, thence southward along the coast of Africa to 
the equator ; thence westward to South America, thence north- 
ward to the Gulf of Mexico. It is said to keep in motion one- 
fourth of all the water of the Atlantic. Within this grand circle 
of movement is what is called the Saragossa sea, where the waters 
are still and covered with seaweed. 

There is a current of cold water which has been traced from 
Spitzbergen within io° of the North Pole, thence to the coast 
of Greenland and along it to its southern extremity around which 



Sec. 1/2.] OCEANIC CURRENTS. 307 

it curves, running northward into Davis' strait; thence turning 
to the southwestward it proceeds to the coast of Labrador, and 
having united with the polar current from Baffin's bay, being 
now fifty French miles in width, it reaches the east coast of 
Newfoundland, where it separates into two branches. The 
eastern branch passes under the Gulf stream and pursues its 
course across the Atlantic to the African coast, while the west- 
ern branch continues as a counter current alongside the Gulf 
stream and between it and the United States coast as far as to 
Florida. Eastward from Iceland a polar current passes under 
the Gulf stream. Near Bear island, another from the northeast 
meets the Gulf stream and divides it into two or three channels. 
This interference of the counter cold streams from the north is 
greatest during the summer months. The polar currents are 
greatly reduced during the winter season, while the Gulf stream 
is then stronger than in summer (Petermann). 

There is a surface current through Behring's strait into the 
Arctic ocean. Humboldt's current sets northward along the 
coast of Peru. There is a surface current into the Mediterra- 
nean and an under current outward. The same is true of the 
Red sea and of most or all inland bodies of water which have 
direct communication with the ocean. The Indian ocean has 
its currents and counter currents. The Chinese current, with 
another of cold water flowing between it and the coast of China, 
is in this as in other respects, quite like our Gulf stream. Cap- 
tain Grant crossed a current setting southward from the Cape of 
Good Hope, which was sixteen hundred miles across and 23 
warmer in the middle than at the edges. 

Besides surface currents there are numerous undercurrents of 
which, however, less is known. They often exist as counter 
currents immediately beneath those which run on the surface. 
Icebergs with tops high above the surface have been seen cutting 
and tearing their way northward through a sheet of ice or against 
surface currents setting in the opposite direction. They were 
probably carried along by a powerful under current. Captain 



308 currents. [Chap. XXV. 

Wilkes crossed a hyperborean current at the equator two hundred 
miles in width. 

All this movement and counter movement of the waters of 
our globe are so vast and complicated that they cannot be here 
presented even in outline. There is, no doubt, a general inter- 
change ot the warmer waters of the South with the cooler waters 
of the North, the former passing mostly over the surface, the 
latter generally moving in sheets or currents along lower levels. 
The general exchange of waters between the equator and the 
poles mitigates the heat of tropical climates, while it prevents a 
greater accumulation of ice at the poles, and with it the greater 
encroachment of perpetual winter on habitable parallels. It is 
the great equalizer of temperature and climate. If there were 
no exchange of waters between the equator and the poles, the 
difference of temperature would be 210°; with such exchange as 
now takes place, the difference is only 8o°. Without the 
equalization of temperature by the counter movement of the 
waters between the torrid and frigid zones, the earth would not 
be habitable for such beings as now exist upon it (Croll). 

The general conception of oceanic circulation must be that it 
is a counter and compensating movement which affords a 
magnificent example of that antagonistic tendency of action, 
which all forms of phenomena are certain to assume, one way or 
another. 

Section 173. — The winds, fitful as they seem, are yet subject 
to laws, and so regular, that wind charts are made for the use of 
mariners. Seamen are well advised as to the general course of 
the winds and the locality of the belts of calms. The currents 
of the atmosphere like the currents of the ocean constitute a 
complete system of counter and compensating movement. The 
trade winds blow from the calm belts near the tropics toward the 
northwest and southwest till they meet in the calm belt near the 
equator. Here, having accumulated their maximum of heat and 
become light, they rise, pass each other, and as upper currents 
continue toward the southeast in the southern hemisphere, and 
toward the northeast in the northern hemisphere, till they reach 



Sec. 173."] ATMOSPHERIC CURRENTS. 309 

the calm belts near the tropics, where they descend and pass as 
surface currents toward either pole. For every current beneath 
there is a counter current above. 

Monsoons sometimes deflect and even reverse the course of 
the trade winds; but only through a more powerful action of 
the same cause which produces the trades themselves. When 
the atmosphere of any region becomes very much more heated 
than that of the contiguous regions, the heated and expanded 
air must rise, and surface currents from the surrounding atmos- 
phere must set toward the ascending column. The heating up 
of the deserts of central Asia causes the monsoons of the Indian 
ocean which blow during a part of the year in that direction. 
The southeast trade winds of this ocean pass gradually into the 
southwest monsoons which set toward the deserts in the interior 
of Asia; the influence of the heated desert during a part of the 
year having in this case deflected the course of the southeast 
trades, and reversed the usual direction of the winds between 
the equator and the tropic of Cancer. 

The deserts of Africa in like manner cause a vast column of 
heated air to ascend; hence, the monsoons in the Atlantic on 
the coast of Africa. The monsoons of the Gulf of Mexico and 
of the Pacific along the coast of Central America are caused by 
the heated plains of Mexico and Utah. The influence of heated 
deserts on the course of the winds is felt a great way off. The 
wind currents of the Indian ocean are affected by the desert of 
Cobi and the scorching plains of Asia, one thousand miles dis- 
tant. It is shown that the atmosphere of Austria and other parts 
of Europe, is affected by the deserts of Arabia. 

The land and sea breezes along the shore of large bodies of 
water are due to the variable temperature of the land, heating by 
day and cooling by night, while the temperature of the water 
remains quite uniform, receiving and losing heat more slowly. 
For the same reason the influence of islands on the atmospheric 
currents is very considerable. The unevenness of the earth's 
surface, its mountains, valleys, and plains, also the irregular dis- 



310 currents. \Chap. XXV. 

tribution of land and sea, are all sources of disturbance in the 
general wind-system of the world. 

Section 174. — While we cannot contemplate the oceanic and 
atmospheric circulations without being impressed with the feat- 
ure of counter and compensating movement, may we not find in 
their causes the like features of contrast? The philosophers 
are not agreed concerning the cause of ocean-currents. But so 
far as our purpose is concerned, it matters not whether the vari- 
ous modifications of the gravitation theory held by Maury, Cold- 
ing, Carpenter be true, or the wind theory advocated by Profes- 
sor Zoppritz, by James Croll, and by Petermann. They all refer 
oceanic circulation to the same ultimate source. Gravity could 
not act to produce currents did not the action of heat produce 
inequalities in the weight and depth of the oceanic waters. And, 
if the wind be the cause of such ocean-currents, heat is equally 
indispensable for the production of the necessary propelling cur- 
rents in the atmosphere. The sun is the prime mover in either 
case, and must act in connection with gravity to produce the 
currents in question. From the sun proceeds the expansive 
energy which produces inequality, while gravity is as constantly 
at work to restore the equilibrium. Both the gravitation theory 
and the wind theory of ocean currents depend ultimately on the 
antagonistic action of gravity and heat. Then, if the wind theory 
be the true one, as appears probable, we are still dealing with 
antagonism. There can be no winds without the local differ- 
ences of temperature and the constant action of gravity to restore 
the equilibrium thus disturbed; and hence, by their antithetical 
action, heat and gravity co-operate to set the currents of the 
atmosphere in motion, while these in turn set the currents of 
the sea in motion, to the benignant modification of climate. 

Section 175. — In all this movement and counter-movement of 
"wind and wave," there is necessarily much conflict and vio- 
lence. In the mad war of waves men and their works have 
perished through all the ages. There are tides — due to the 
counter-action of the same force in the earth and moon; — there 



Sec. 175.] METEOROLOGICAL GOOD AND EVIL. 311 

are maelstroms — caused by the oblique meeting of currents; — 
there are water-spouts and what are called tide-rips, bores, eagres; 
and attendant on the action of all these is more or less violence. 
On the land we have fogs, thunder and lightning, storms, cyclones, 
tornadoes, gusts, floods — often sublime in power, but ruthless 
in destruction. And as calamity assumes terrific forms when 
the earth rocks a huge wave over the shore far into the land, so 
does it when the tornado meets the sea and goads it into fury. 

Little do these destructive energies abate with the advance of 
science and civilization; but with equal violence they do more 
harm, since there are both more people and property to be 
destroyed. We may predict the storm without being able to 
shun it, for while we may turn aside the lightning, wind and 
flood must have their way. 

Let us note in this connection that, in the northern hemis- 
phere, which has more land than water and a greater diversity 
of climatic conditions, meteorological violence is more fitful and 
frequent than in the southern hemisphere where such condi- 
tions are less diversified. Yet this same geographical diversity 
and even the meteorological instability which accompanies it, 
are the conditions which most favor the development of sentient 
and intellectual life. 

The variegated distribution of land and water; the inequali- 
ties of the earth's surface; the rotation of the earth on its axis 
(being the occasion of the alternation of action and rest so dis- 
tinctly a feature of vital existence, and indeed of all develop- 
ment); the change of seasons; above all, the heating and life- 
giving power of the sun; — rid the earth of these, and while we 
have thereby rid it of the disturbance, violence, and destruction 
which they cause, we have at the same time rid it of the very 
conditions of life, and we should indeed have a very peaceful 
world — as peaceful as the Buddhist's Nirwana. The necessary 
conditions of life are necessarily conditions of discord and pain. 
The same play of the elements which brings us rain and makes 
life on earth possible, brings storms and floods. The pain which 
they inflict on man, is not the end certainly for which these clash- 



312 LIMITATION OF THE HABITABLE AREA. \Chap. XX VL 

ing elements of the environment exist, but if they act for man's 
behoof they must also inflict the injury; and they are as ineradi- 
cable and as unavoidable as if they were the essential part of 
the "plan." 

Let it be stated that the great preponderance of rather agree- 
able experience among sentient creatures so obviously outweighs 
the suffering due to the discord in their conditions of life, that it 
is not necessary constantly to protest that the good outweighs 
the evil. This is plain enough without such reiteration. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

MAN'S ENVIRONMENT — LIMITATIONS OF THE HABITABLE AREA. 

Section 176. — The aqueous and igneous agencies of nature 
do not present the only examples of antagonistic action on the 
planet; there is antagonism of results growing out of the opera- 
tions necessary to make the earth a human habitation. Man 
contributes, by the changes he brings about, to the geography and 
topography of the earth, to the building up and to the pulling 
down as well. 

He clears off the forests and reduces the land to cultivation. 
He drains marshes and even lakes, he confines rivers to their 
beds, constructs immense walls for the protection of coasts, and 
pushes the seas back from the land by means of dikes and 
embankments. He underdrains the soil and thereby greatly 
increases its arability. He improves navigable rivers, compel- 
ling them to deepen their mouths for the passage of great ships, 
and he cuts new channels for commerce, some of them of geo- 
graphical significance. The grading and paving of river banks, 



Sec. 177.] FORESTS CONSERVE THE SOIL. 313 

the building of piers, the dredging of harbors, — these have been 
done in the interest of commerce. Streams have been directed 
upon marshes to fill them up by the precipitation of sediment, 
and render them arable. Man has planted forests where nature 
had none, and stocked with fish waters which had been desti- 
tute. Much has man done to fit the earth for the home of 
man, and where the beasts once roamed in the wilderness, there 
are now green fields, artistic landscapes, beautiful homes, 
thronged cities. A ditcher of more than usual intelligence for 
his class, once remarked, as he thrust his spade into the earth: 
"The world was only half made, and we have to do a dev'lish 
sight of hard work to finish the job." But the popular idea 
that man is doing nearly everything to improve and scarcely any- 
thing to injure, is an error. 

While in many instances man is reclaiming waste lands, he is 
in others making lands waste; and it sometimes happens that 
the wild beasts avenge themselves for defeat by haunting the 
places wherein were once the luxuriant abodes of historical 
peoples. 

Section 177. — The forest is the great conservator of the 
earth's surface in hilly and mountainous regions. It not only 
retains the soil in its place and thus antagonizes the degrading 
power of the waters, but it adds its accumulated stores of vege- 
table matter, abstracted from the air, to the surface, and thus 
antagonizes the degrading tendency of the waters in a more 
active sense. Such accumulations are indeed slow, but the bil- 
lions of vegetable organisms steadily at work on hill and plain 
effect tangible results in the course of ages, thus co-operating 
with the igneous agencies in building up the land. 

The innumerable roots which penetrate the soil hold it 
together, while the spongy and bibulous surface formed by 
decayed and undecayed leaves drink up the falling waters, which 
thus pass harmlessly away. All this is changed when the steeps 
are cleared of their timber and reduced to cultivation. There 
is no longer a conserving network of rootlets, the spongy coat- 
ing of the soil has disappeared, the rains pass rapidly over the 



314 LIMITATION OF THE HABITABLE AREA. [C/iafl. XXVI. 

surface and carry the soil with them in quantites so great that, 
after the lapse of a few generations, it is in many instances all 
swept away, and the substratum of rock laid bare. The rivers 
thus swollen to resistless floods tear away their banks, and carry 
them down to the sea. In many instances so large an aggregate 
of sediment swept from arable lands and thrown into the rivers, 
fills them up at their mouths and along their beds, till they over- 
flow their banks and convert productive fields into pestilential 
swamps. 

Extensive regions of country once fertile and populous have 
been thus rendered sterile and tenantless. Professor A. Geikie 
observes : " It must be owned that man, in most of his strug- 
gles with the world around him, has fought blindly for his own 
ultimate interests. His contest, successful for the moment, has 
too often led to sure and sad disaster. Stripping forests from 
hill and mountain, he has gained his immediate object in the 
possession of their abundant stores of timber ; but he has laid 
open the slopes to be burned by drought, or to be swept bare by 
rain. Countries once rich in beauty, plenteous in all that was 
needful for his support, are now burned and barren, or almost 
denuded of their soil." — (P. S. Monthly, Sept., 1879). Hon. 
George P. Marsh, in his work on Man and Nature, declares that, 
if the countries which mankind have ruined could be restored, 
" The thronging millions of Europe might still find room on 
the Eastern Continent, and the main current of emigration be 
turned towards the rising instead of the setting sun." He 
further observes : " There are parts of Asia Minor, of Northern 
Africa, of Greece, and even of Alpine Europe, where the opera- 
tion of causes set in action by man has brought the face of the 
earth to a desolation almost as complete as that of the moon ; 
and though within that brief space of time which we call the 
historical period, they are known to have been covered with 
luxuriant woods, verdant pastures, and fertile meadows, they are 
now too far deteriorated to be reclaimable by man, nor can they 
become again fit for human use, except through great geological 
changes, or other mysterious influences, or agencies of which 



Sec* 177. ~\ DESTRUCTION OF THE SOIL BY MAN. 315 

we have no present knowledge, and over which we have no pros- 
pective control. The earth is fast becoming an unfit home 
for its noblest inhabitant and another era of equal human 
crime and human improvidence, and of like duration with 
that through which traces of that crime and that improvi- 
dence extend, would reduce it to such a condition of impover- 
ished productiveness, of shattered surface, of climatic excess, as 
to threaten the depravation, barbarism, and perhaps even extinc- 
tion of the species." — (Man and Nature, 43, 44). Felix L. 
Oswald states that, " since the beginning of the sixteenth cen- 
tury the population of the four Mediterranean peninsulas has 
decreased more than fifty-five millions, and the value of their 
agricultural products by at least sixty per cent." "Afghanistan, 
Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, Macedonia, the 
southern islands of the Mediterranean, and the whole of northern 
Africa from Cairo to the western extremity of Morocco — coun- 
tries which were once blessed with abundance and a glorious 
climate — are now either absolute sand wastes or the abodes of 
perennial droughts, hunger and wretchedness; and wherever 
statistical records have been preserved, it is proved, beyond the 
possibility of a doubt, that their misfortune commenced with 
the disappearance of their arboreal vegetation." — (North Am. 
Review, Jan., 1879). 

If the reader has not heretofore given attention to this subject, 
these may seem to be extreme statements; yet they are hardly to 
be regarded as such, when we recollect that numerous rich coun- 
tries and cities in the East, once flourishing are now desolate and 
in ruins, and only hamlets and barren regions in their place. There 
is now no wealth of production from the soil to feed so great a 
population as those cities once contained, nor to stimulate the 
commercial activity which built them up. Thus, we have the 
paradox that in fitting the earth to yield him sustenance, man 
has, in many instances, destroyed the very conditions of that sus- 
tenance ; and in enlarging his home on earth, he has actually 
narrowed it. The desolation that has taken place may not all 
have been necessary. Under different management, regions 



316 LIMITATION OF THE HABITABLE AREA. \CJldp. XXVI. 

now barren might have retained their arability and their fitness 
for human habitation. But much of it in all probability, at least 
without concert of action, immense labor, and more care than 
man will take, has been inevitable, and much of the same thing 
is at this moment occurring, and much more of it will occur for 
a long time, if not for all time to come. When the steep hill or 
mountain sides are cleared off and put under cultivation, the con- 
stant waste of the surface soil by the washing of heavy rains can 
hardly be wholly prevented, even by terracing. Ruskin speaks of 
successful terracing in China, Borneo, and India, and becomes 
enthusiastic over the consequences of its adoption in the Italian 
Alps. Up to four thousand feet, he says it may be successfully 
applied. He declares : "The Alps might be one paradise of lovely 
pasture and avenued forest of chestnut and blossomed trees, 
with cascades docile and innocent as infants, laughing all sum- 
mer long from crag to crag, and pool to pool, and the Adige and 
the Po, the Dora and the Ticino, no more denied, no more 
alternating between fierce flood and venomous languor, but in 
calm, clear currents, bearing ships to every city, and health to 
every field of all that azure plain of Lombard Italy." — (Nature, 

I., 509-) 

Some allowance must be made for artistic fancy. Much 
might no doubt be done by the terrace and by constant vig- 
ilance, but after all it will be found that, in such localities, there 
is still much of truth in the antithesis that the conditions of 
living are the conditions of destruction. But besides these 
steeps which might be largely conserved by terracing, there are 
gentle declivities and rolling lands which hardly admit of the 
terrace, yet if they are cultivated at all, there are no means at 
present known of preventing the loss, stealthy but certain, from 
the wash of heavy rains. Only the restoration of the forest 
could wholly save them. And then we must recollect that when 
lands are conserved by terrace or other means involving great 
expense, there must be a sufficient motive for the undertaking. 
This motive has only found place where population presses hard 
against the extreme limits of subsistence; and when this is the 



Sec. 177.} WASHING AWAY OF THE SOIL. 317 

case, the energy of improvement is sustained by the danger of 
starvation — a condition of things which is not Utopian. 

But the evil of denudation is not the only one attendant on 
clearing up the woodlands. Forests obstruct the winds and 
protect man, animal, and plant. They prevent evaporation, 
absorb the rains, and thus feed perennial springs and maintain 
the constancy of the streams below. The forests gone, the 
floods which follow damage the labors of man, and the dearth 
of water which follows is often with difficulty made adequate to 
the supply of civilized needs. Driving winds now unobstructed 
blast the winter vegetation, while frosts strike with more force, 
and it becomes more difficult to grow the fruits and grains as 
the country becomes cleared. The very means which man 
uses to obtain greater production from the earth, brings him 
trouble and renders production more precarious. And so far as 
we at present know, he cannot get the one without the other — 
cannot extend the harvests without rendering harvests more 
uncertain. 

In most cases of desolation in consequence of clearing and 
cultivation, there is no record left of the progress of the ruin; 
we only know that regions once fertile and populous are now 
barren and without inhabitants. But there has been abundant 
opportunity to study the process of destruction in what has 
occurred within the last hundred years under the eyes of com- 
petent observers. The French Alps afford a striking instance. 
Statistical returns show the gradual destruction of arable 
lands and the gradual depopulation of entire provinces. The 
torrents wash away the farms, and the inhabitants are com- 
pelled to abandon the country. Within only a few years, thou- 
sands have been thus deprived of their homes and sent by 
stern necessity to find the means of subsistence elsewhere. In 
ten years, from 1842 to 1852, the department of the Lower 
Alps alone lost sixty-one thousand acres of arable land which 
" had been washed away or rendered worthless for cultivation 
by torrents and the abuses of pasturage. In five years, from 
15 



318 LIMITATION OF THE HABITABLE AREA. [Chap. XXVI. 

185 1 to 1856, the several departments of the French Alps lost 
one hundred and three thousand inhabitants." — (Marsh). 

Section 178. — People plant trees on their prairie farms, be- 
cause it is quite an immediate personal interest to do so ; they 
clear the timber from the hill sides with the same motive. The 
one does good, the other works destruction. If the personal 
motive co-operated with the general interest of the country now 
and for the great future, it would be the most natural thing in 
the world to promote that general interest; but where the indi- 
vidual motive does not so co-operate, it is quite impossible to 
have men pursue the better way. There is a vague confidence 
in what might be done, which takes no account of human pos- 
sibilities and impossibilities. If for thousands of years past man 
has proceeded in a certain course on a certain principle, it is 
gratuitiously assumed that all this may be abandoned, and human 
procedure directed by truly rational and artistic guides. If 
•mankind have been short-sighted, looking only to immediate 
interests, and forgetful of the future calamities which the blind 
pursuit of immediate interests is very often sure to bring, it is 
nevertheless assumed that the better way — the reverse course — 
will be followed if it be only pointed out. But this overlooks 
the inflexibilities of human nature. England and France have 
for generations stood at the centre of the greatest civilization 
the world has ever seen, yet they have done little more to con- 
serve their soil, perhaps, than did those countries in the East to 
conserve theirs centuries ago; and centuries hence England and 
France may be what those countries now are. Their streams 
run lawless as they did in the days of the Gauls and Britons, 
and with far more destructive results; but there is no remedy. 
There is little or no concert of action. The freedom of a man's 
doing what he pleases with his own stands in the way, and the 
government is quite powerless to repair the neglect of the indi- 
vidual proprietors. The owner may know the fatality which 
threatens his lands; but the knowing does not furnish motive 
sufficient for doing. It is precisely so in America. A consider- 
able percentage of the soil is going to the ocean every year, and 



Sec. I?£.~\ DIFFICULTIES OF CONSERVING SOIL. 319 

there is no hand to arrest it. Formerly the rivers ran brown 
stained by the leaves of the forest; now, for a considerable part 
of the year, they run the color of the soil through which they 
pass. This was brought vividly to the writer's mind in the 
spring of 1881, when for weeks he witnessed the Potomac, as it 
passed Washington freighted red with the soil of Maryland and 
the two Virginias. All the hill country of Tennessee, Kentucky, 
OhkvPennsylvania, and many other States, with soil naturally 
fertile, is going in the same way, and there is no practical remedy. 
It is easy to say it might be different. But individuals study their 
immediate interests. They are not calculating, and very generally 
cannot afford to calculate, for future generations. The govern- 
ment might condemn such lands as it does the tracks of rail- 
roads, and undertake their conservation in a scientific way. This 
is, perhaps, the only method of attaining the end, but it will not 
be adopted; and it is just as well to say that such a result belongs 
to the category of impossible things. The machinery of govern- 
ment is in many ways a curse now to the governed, and the 
greater that machinery becomes, the greater is the contingency 
of its evils. And then shall the humble toiler on his little hill 
or mountain home be deprived of it against his will? This 
would not accord with the drift of achievements in the field of 
personal liberty. The Anglo-Saxon has watched, and wept, and 
prayed, and when there was need poured out his blood like water 
for the liberty of using his own tactics in the battle of life, and 
he would voluntarily surrender it now for no consideration. 
Indeed, even if the hill-lands could be conserved under pater- 
nalism, the cost might be too great. Better, perhaps, that the soil 
should continue to run to the sea than that the example of 
paternalism should breach the bulwarks of individual liberty. 

It is in this way one good excludes another good, and both 
cannot be had at once — the possession of one necessarily 
excluding the other. If there is full recognition of personal 
rights, the hill-country deteriorates; and a thing so important as 
the preservation intact of the means of production from the soil 



320 LIMITATION OF THE HABITABLE AREA. \Chap. XXVI- 

is incompatible with what is equally important, the preservation 
of an open field for the exercise of personal sovereignty. 

Since the writing of the above I find an account in the Popu- 
lar Science Monthly (October, 1881) from the Revue des Deux 
Mondes, of measures taken by the French government for the 
reclamation of some of the damaged Alpine lands. It is done 
by breaking the force of the torrents by means of wattles and 
dams, and by re-wooding the belt formerly in forests, and which 
lies between the pasture lands above and the agricultural lands 
below. Serious opposition was made in some of the communes 
even under French rule, which retains more of the paternal in 
form and spirit than is to be found in England and America; 
and it is not at all certain that the successful beginning which has 
been made will be considerably extended. One stream is spoken 
of which has been transformed from a raging torrent to a peaceful 
river at a cost of twenty-four thousand dollars, and the general 
picture given of success is rosy indeed ; but, admitting that it is 
all that is claimed in preventing the escape of the soil, one 
can not but reflect that the permanence of the improvement can 
only be maintained by the constant exercise of the same pater- 
nalism which made it. The opposition which was made grew 
out of interference with an immediate interest — the temporary 
interdiction of pasturage; and if left to individual management 
the new forests will go like the old ; the wattles and dams will 
be torn away; the torrent will in time resume its former vio- 
lence, and the soil again find a lodging place at the bottom of 
the sea. The difficulties of the problem have not yet been set 
aside. 

Section 179. — The fact of waste brings to the mind in a 
striking manner the form of antagonism which is presented by 
the pressure of population against the limits of the arable lands 
of the earth, and the resistance of said limits to further exaction 
for human sustenance. If the surface of the earth were not a 
determinate quantity, the numbers of the human race might go 
on increasing forever without obstruction, except that which is 
experienced in subjecting the lands, — a form of resistance, 



Sec. I7Q.} INCREASE OF POPULATION. 321 

which, as the fact proves, rather facilitates than hinders the 
increase of population. But the surface of the earth is an abso- 
lute quantity; and though the extent of habitable land may yet 
be considerably increased by clearing, draining, irrigating, and 
the like means of industrial conquest, yet, as we have seen, 
while growth is taking place on one side, there is falling off on 
the other. For a long time to come the excess of acquisition 
over the loss may be considerable ; but the time must come 
when there will be no further additions to the habitable surface 
of the earth; and the time may come when the additions of 
new lands having ceased, and the old still wearing slowly away, 
the aggregate of arable lands will suffer a gradual diminution. 
But whether there is ever absolute diminution or not, the extent 
and availability of arable surface will one day reach their maxi- 
mum under the subjecting hand of man, and when that maxi- 
mum is reached, the possibilities of the earth's population will 
be bound round by a cordon of economical necessities which 
cannot be broken. The resistance of this limit to the further 
progress of population will be effectual and complete. Resist- 
ance to natural tendencies will make itself felt in some form or 
other. If the causes which depress the activities of reproduc- 
tion are not sufficiently active to keep down population, it must 
eventually reach the utmost limit of a healthy and comfortable 
subsistence. Here, as so generally elsewhere, limitation and 
conflict put in an appearance and play their role. 

The preceding statement is made on two presumptions: 
one is that science will not discover some short road to unlim- 
ited means of sustenance, as for example, by their ready crea- 
tion out of the simple elements. But until this is done or until 
there is some assured anticipation of its accomplishment, we 
shall have to base our contemplation of future prospects, as far 
as sustenance is concerned, on the slow and expensive, but well 
assured process of vegetable elaboration. The other is the pre- 
sumption of geographical stability. But this is not to be 
counted on. The arable surface of the earth may be increased. 
Bengal and other less areas are new-made lands. If the waters 



322 LIMITATION OF THE HABITABLE AREA. \Clldp. XXIV. 

of the surface should gradually descend into the earth beyond 
the possibility of restoration, or if the ocean beds should 
deepen, the area of dry land would be increased. Such loss of 
water by descent into the interior of the earth, while it might 
afford a minimum of temporary relief, would nevertheless be an 
ill omen, since it would eventually bring about on our planet the 
condition which now exists on the moon, and no living thing 
could find subsistence. If the ocean-beds are sinking, they are 
probably filling up with sediment as fast as room is made by 
depression. There is little change to be expected from this 
source, and it is as likely to reduce as to increase the area of 
arable lands. An "Atlantic continent" may have sunk into the 
ocean, and we know that the wearing of the waters is steadily 
reducing the acres from which mankind draw sustenance. 

Section 180. — Man is the merest puppet that dances to the 
play of great physical agencies. He talks about perpetual 
growth in riches and power, and the unchecked evolution of 
society, till we grow dizzy contemplating the magnificence of 
results, as if man would be master of the earth; but the earth 
will always be man's master, and he must submit to its limita- 
tions. Suppose the present civilized world, after thousands of 
years of development, has accomplished marvelous results, and 
is looking forward to still greater, when an ice age, as in times 
past, creeps over the land, and slowly but surely overwhelms 
hamlets and cities, monuments of industry and art and millions 
of homes in glacial ruin, and buries even great names in ever- 
lasting oblivion, — what becomes of man's boasted mastery over 
nature and his ability to transform earth into Eden? Over the 
great causes which determine climate man can have no power 
whatever. 

The one thing especially to be learned on this subject from 
the geological record is, that taking in periods of considerable 
extent, there is nothing better established than the instability of 
climate ; and we should infer therefrom that, altogether likely in 
the future, perhaps not very distant, the climatic conditions of a 
high order of society may shift from one latitude to another, 



Sec. l80.~\ GLACIAL EPOCHS. 323 

degrading the civilization in one region, and giving it opportu- 
nity to develop in another. Something of this kind seems to 
have been taking place within the historical period, and it is 
probable that such changes of condition will still continue, alter- 
nating from one form to another. Such alternations of climate 
have greatly affected the flora and fauna of various latitudes, 
and have brought to the same parallel animals and plants which 
naturally belong to parallels wide asunder. In the Miocene, 
plants of the temperate zone (thirty-ninth parallel) are found 
within the arctic circle, and even the magnolia bloomed within 
ten degrees of the north pole (Prof. Heer); while at a later 
period, animals from the north and from the south have alter- 
nated with each other and found common graves in latitudes 
where the present climate is adapted to neither. 

It is a curious but chastening reflection on human destiny to 
think of the antiquarians of some future civilization excavating 
the sites of our cities north of the fortieth parallel for the 
remains of our civilization. Indeed, the very materials of our 
cities and of all industrial creation would be scattered by an 
ice age like the past among the debris and boulders of the new 
drift. We should wonder where then they will find those Uto- 
pian books which insist on human perfection, and a future 
period of harmony and undisturbed equilibrium between man 
and his environment. 

But even if the extreme of cold should not be as great as in 
the past, the injury inflicted would be infinitely greater, owing 
to the existence of great civilizations in the northern hemi- 
sphere, a condition which was totally wanting during the former 
glacial reign. 

The changes towards such a period of cold, if begun, would 
come on slowly. It would require an age, and perhaps the 
record of instruments to discover a perceptible difference in the 
climate along the fortieth parallel, say. But if slow, results 
would be none the less certain. Habitable regions would become 
uninhabitable, and population would be gradually, but surely 
pressed from the North toward the South. A decline of popu- 



324 LIMITATION OF THE HABITABLE AREA. [Chap. XXVI. 

lation would become compulsory through increasing shortage of 
subsistence, with whatever evils this would entail. Such con- 
siderations do not point to an era of undisturbed adjustment in 
the future ; and it is logically incumbent on the Utopians to 
break the force of the facts which point so unerringly o to this 
form of future physical disturbance. 

It does not set aside these considerations to instance the fact 
that, on the whole, through all these changes of the past, species 
have continued to ascend to higher types with more highly 
organized brains. There must come an end to this ascending 
movement, and we may already have reached it. The point is 
this, — even the improvement of type has come up through per- 
petual disturbance and much tribulation involving the pain of 
continual adjustment, without which it could not have taken 
place ; and therefore, it is not possible to extort from this fact 
any legitimate support for the optimism which revels in the 
dream of a perpetual paradise. 

Section 181. — But, in forecasting the future, it is not neces- 
sary to insist on a " first class," or even a second class, ice-age. 
The great work of Croll on Climate and Time seems to have 
placed the glacial epoch where Darwin's work on the Origin of 
Species had placed the question of development. If it does 
not account for the phenomena, it is, nevertheless, the only 
attempt which makes even a plausible approach towards doing 
so. In this theory, the glacial epoch is referred primarily to 
astronomical causes, and secondarily to changes which these 
bring about on the earth itself. There have probably been many 
great alternations of climate in the past, and many glacial 
epochs. These epochs appear to be of compound character 
owing to alternations of extreme heat and extreme cold. Speak- 
ing only of later geological times, there is evidence that there 
was such a period in the Eocene, and another of great severity 
in the Miocene. Still later, in the Post-Pliocene, there was a 
period of the kind which is characterized as the glacial epoch, 
or ice-age. 

If the extreme eccentricity of the earth's orbit be necessary to 



Sec. i8j.] deterioration of climate. 325 

the production of a glacial climate, the recurrence of another ice- 
age is a long way still in the future. The last glacial period may 
have occurred from eighty thousand to two hundred and forty 
thousand years ago, and it would be about one hundred and 
fifty thousand years more before similar, but much less favorable, 
conditions for glacial action could again come round; the con- 
ditions of an extreme ice-period being still more remote. But 
it is so unlike our experience that we can hardly realize the des- 
olation which would attend the cold necessary to perpetual ice 
thousands of feet thick in the north temperate zone, and send- 
ing glaciers and icebergs down past the fortieth parallel. What 
would be the chances for civilization anywhere in the northern 
hemisphere under such circumstances? But if this extreme of 
frigid conditions is not to be apprehended as near at hand, there 
are milder forms of such conditions which are probably not very 
remote. There are periods of twenty-one thousand years when 
the winter season corresponds with aphelion or the earth's 
greatest distance from the sun. The changes which this may 
bring about under the very moderate eccentricity of the earth's 
orbit which now obtains, may greatly shift the localities most 
favorable to the development of civilization. During the whole 
of the historical period climatic conditions have probably been 
growing more and more favorable in the more northern regions, 
— a fact to be placed beside this other fact, that, during the histori- 
cal period civilization has been pushing its way northward. The 
greatest powers of the earth have been gradually shifting their 
centres toward higher latitudes. About six hundred years ago 
the winter of the northern hemisphere corresponded with peri- 
helion, the earth's least distance from the sun. Since then our 
winters occur farther and farther from the sun, and they will 
continue to do so for nearly ten thousand years to come. The 
present small eccentricity of the earth's orbit with its gradual 
dimunition affords no basis for an ice-age, but it is believed that 
there are already indications of approaching cold. "It is cer- 
tainly not merely a chance coincidence that in general the 
climate of Europe is deteriorating, that Greenland is covered with 



326 LIMITATION OF THE HABITABLE AREA. [Chap. XXVI. 

ice, that the colony of Iceland is disappearing, that ice encum- 
bers the Spitzbergen island, Behring's strait, and Baffin's 
bay. It should also be observed that it was about this period 
that the glaciers of the Alps commenced to extend more and 
more, and that the culture of the vine has disappeared in many 
localities in France." (Professor George Pilar, University of 
Brussels. Revolutions of the Crust of the Earth. Smithsonian 
Report, 1876). Iceland, now becoming desolate, had a high 
civilization in the twelfth century with fine birch forests cheered 
by the song of the nightingale. Greenland previous to the 
fourteenth century was a flourishing colony, but is now covered 
with ice. At the same time it is believed that the austral 
glacier is beginning to disappear, and that the climate of the 
southern hemisphere is improving. 

It is impossible to estimate with any degree of precision what 
will be the effects of the continual change which is carrying our 
winter from perihelion to aphelion. It is difficult to believe that 
six hundred years has made any considerable difference. It is 
not at all improbable that with the advance of the northern 
winter toward aphelion, or greatest distance from the sun, results 
will greatly multiply, increasing in something like a geometrical 
progression. This may be illustrated by the influence on sur- 
face currents of the ocean by increasing cold in the northern 
hemisphere and increasing warmth in the southern hemisphere. 
These now set mainly from the south to the north, bringing 
into our hemisphere much of the heat which is generated by 
the sun in the southern hemisphere, already less favored in other 
ways than our own. The poorer climate is thus robbed to make 
the rich one richer. The surface winds blow from the colder 
to the warmer hemisphere, thus favoring the drift of ocean cur- 
rents in the same direction. With the conditions reversed and 
our hemisphere the colder, as it must become under the con- 
tinual action of precession, these currents of the atmosphere 
and of the ocean will be reversed, passing mainly from north to 
south and robbing our hemisphere of part of its otherwise 
reduced heat to increase that of the southern hemisphere. This 



Sec. l8z.] CAUSES OF CLIMATIC DETERIORATION. 327 

would be a powerful factor affecting for evil the habitable con- 
dition of the north. Even the drifting waters which feed the 
Gulf stream might largely be turned to the southward at Cape 
St. Roque, and not come north, as at present, with their genial 
influence. Anything like this would produce a great change for 
the worse, since, according to Croll's calculations, the Gulf 
stream brings to the north temperate zone one-fourth as much 
heat as most of the Atlantic in the same zone receives from the 
direct rays of the sun. 

There is some ground to apprehend that a period in the 
future as great as the historical period of the past will bring the 
earth to some such climatic conditions as these. The influence 
of the greater quantity of land in the northern hemisphere need 
hardly be taken into account, since its greater absorption of heat 
during the hot summer is offset by its greater radiation of heat 
during the cold winter, and more than offset in the higher lati- 
tudes where the surface is covered with perpetual ice. And 
in lower latitudes the extremes of reaction from the greater 
cold of winter to the greater heat of summer, every year, would 
make a climate of violence and harshness totally incompatible 
with paradisiacal conceptions. 

But the northern hemisphere may not then, quite so much as 
now, exceed the southern in superficial area. If the ice be 
gradually reduced at the southern pole, and increased at the 
northern pole, the waters of the earth's surface would shift, under 
the action of gravity, from the south toward the north, in conse- 
quence of which southern lands would emerge, and northern 
lands would be submerged. Since the Alps — a comparatively 
recent mountain system — were elevated, water has stood around 
them at different times 9,000 feet deep, 7,500 feet, and 4,800 
feet, as shown by lines of erosion. " Analogous lines are found 
in Scotland, Sweden, and some of the African islands." Of 
course the ice-caps at the poles cannot become very thick except 
when winter corresponds with aphelion during extreme eccen- 
tricity of the earth's orbit; so that when we reach the 10,500 
years from A. D 1 . 1248, the northern ice-cap cannot be great, 



328 DIFFICULTIES OF LIMITATION. \Chap. XXVII. 

owing to moderate eccentricity; and while some displacement 
of water from south to north is to be expected under the circum- 
stances, it may not be considerable, though any at all would 
reduce the habitable area where civilization now exists. 

Croll estimates that when the earth was last in aphelion dur- 
ing winter, the eccentricity being somewhat greater then than 
now, it was probably io° or 15 colder than at present. If the 
Gulf stream was reduced in volume, the cold was even greater. 
When the earth next reaches aphelion, about 10,000 years 
hence, eccentricity will be still less; but allowing — all condi- 
tions affecting temperature considered — that the climate in our 
hemisphere would be io° colder than at present, the isotherms, 
or lines of like temperature, would be pushed to the southward at 
least twelve degrees. The climate of Jacksonville, Florida, 
would then correspond with the present climate of Cleveland, 
Ohio. Adjustment to a deteriorating climate would have to be 
taking place for thousands of years before this extreme limit had 
been reached; and the centers of wealth and power would be 
steadily pushed to the southward. We regard such a result with 
skepticism, because of the short duration of individual conscious- 
ness compared with the length of the period required for the 
change to take place. We mistake the stability of conscious- 
ness for the stability of nature. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

MAN'S ENVIRONMENT ECONOMICAL DIFFICULTIES OF LIMITATION. 

Section 182. — Whether or not it will be more difficult in the 
distant future to procure the satisfaction of human wants, is an 
inquiry so beset with uncertain, variable, and at present unascer- 
tainable elements that definite results cannot be reached. Still 



SeC. l82.] THE SUPPLY OF COAL. 329 

it is an interesting inquiry, and involves a complication of oppos- 
ing factors, which challenge attention on account of the intellect- 
ual aesthetics as well as the moral relations of the subject. All 
the considerations which bear on the inquiry arrange themselves 
around the leading factors, which may be stated, as the multiply- 
ing demands of increasing population versus the supply of 
increasing labor, capital, and invention applied to the earth's lim- 
ited habitable area. 

1. Increase of agricultural products from land already under 
cultivation is only to be had by a still greater increase of agri- 
cultural labor ; that is, fifty per cent, increase of products would 
require more than fifty per cent, additional labor. In the aggre- 
gate, after the lands are all occupied and have to be put under 
high culture to supply the demands of increasing population, 
more labor in proportion to the products obtained will have to 
be expended on the soil. This is called the law of diminish- 
ing products. 

2. The same law holds in relation to mining. This is not 
felt while new mines are constantly being opened, but the time 
will come when the old mines have been exhausted, and all the 
rest are in process of exhaustion. This will not tell so deci- 
sively in regard to the metals as in regard to coal. The wear, 
loss, consumption of the metals is not so complete, and to a 
certain extent they may be worked over again. In the case of 
coal the consumption is complete, without the possibility of res- 
toration. Our present stirring, hopeful, happy, and progressive 
civilization is based literally on the heat and power which coal 
affords; and before the supply becomes exhausted, some other 
method or methods of heating and propelling must be discov- 
ered, else civilization will come to an end, and mankind will 
recede toward a less favorable condition of society. This is, of 
course, a long way in the future, but just as sure as one moment 
follows another, the day will come when, if coal continues to be 
the chief dependence for heat, the coal famine will be complete. 
But antecedent to this time, all along the downward curve of 
what may be called the coal movement, it will cost more and 



33° DIFFICULTIES OF LIMITATION. [Chap. XXVII. 

more labor to obtain a given quantity of heat-force; while the 
increasing scarcity will compel a rigid economy in its use, and a 
gradual falling off in the energies of civilized life. 

This statement is made in view of the present methods, of 
utilizing motive power. It is altogether likely, however, that 
new applications of the natural forces will render civilization 
somewhat less dependent on the supply of coal than it is at pres- 
ent. The direct rays of the sun have already been utilized in 
the construction of engines of some power. So that, if it comes 
to the worst, sun-power might be used to drive machinery; but 
this would necessitate great industrial and commercial changes, 
involving great economical disadvantages. Manufacturing would 
have to be transferred to cloudless regions, as to Upper Egypt; 
and surely, in view of the breaking up and readjustment which 
this would necessitate, the optimistic enthusiasm of Ericsson, the 
inventor of a sun-engine, is hardly justified. 

The ebb and flow of the tides and the fall of great rivers may, 
perhaps, be turned to account in the driving of machinery 
beyond anything yet dreamed of in practical life. The trans- 
mission of water-power to great distances by means of dynamic 
electricity, has been so far endorsed by competent authority, that 
it promises great results in the future, moral and social, as 
well as industrial; and it may be largely utilized long before the 
exhaustion of coal threatens the extinction of civilization. — ■ 
(Popular Science Monthly, July, 1879). But this would still 
leave a desideratum in regard to heating power; — which, however, 
promises to be speedily supplied. Water is to be transformed 
into fuel. By uniting hydrogen with the carbon of refuse coal, 
a gas is obtained, which has two and three-quarter times more 
heating power than the coal it is made from, when burned by the 
most economical methods known, and fourteen times as much as 
coal when burned in common stoves. It may be used for 
engines and in making iron, better and more economically than 
is now done — so claimed. — (Popular Science Monthly, March, 
1880). But while water-power may be transmitted to great 
distances by dynamic electricity, while sun-power may be used 



Sec. l82.] POPULATION AND SUPPLY. 33 1 

for driving machinery, while the energy of atomic separation 
effected by electricity may be stored for future use, while the 
refuse of coal may be made more effective than coal itself for 
heating purposes, — all these economies and substitutes require 
preparation, the outlay of labor and capital, for their utilization. 
While there are substitution and saving, these are only to be had 
at a certain cost. All the new appliances for heating and propul- 
sion are substantially but devices to forestall deterioration in the 
forces of civilized society. They promise little or no absolute 
gain. They are not simpler nor cheaper, and are oftener worse 
than better, than the present sources of heat and power; but 
they are less wasteful, and their value consists mainly in that they 
may lessen the consumption of coal, and keep down its cost for 
some time to come. 

3. The increase of population co-operates with the increased 
difficulties of cultivating the soil and working the mines to add 
to the burthen of labor. This is, of course, only felt, in the 
present state of civilization, in densely peopled countries. It is 
the absolute limit of the arable area that tells unfavorably. A 
given area will produce only a given quantity of subsistence, and 
the inhabitants would still require enough to live on, however 
equally wealth might be distributed among them. Mill observes: 
"A greater number of people cannot, in any given state of 
civilization, be collectively so well provided for as a smaller. 
The niggardliness of nature, not the injustice of society, is the 
cause of the penalty attached to over-population. An unjust 
distribution of wealth does not even aggravate the evil, but, at 
most, causes it to be somewhat earlier felt." — (P. E., Book I., 
Chapter XIIL, Section 2). Density of population, by its own 
necessities, tells against the supply of wants in consequence of 
the law of diminishing product from equal labor, when the earth 
is taxed for the greatest possible production. 

4. In the course of civilized progress, a count which directly 
antagonizes the foregoing is the improvement of agricultural 
implements and methods. This has made enormous strides 



332 DIFFICULTIES OF LIMITATION. \Chap. XXVII. 

within the last thirty years, more, perhaps, than it will again make 
for a long time to come. 

5. An additional count which indirectly antagonizes the law of 
diminishing product in agricultural industry, is improvement in 
the implements of manufacturing, in consequence of which, the 
products of the same labor are greatly multiplied. The labor of 
all supplies the needs of all, and when manufacturing is greatly 
aided by machinery, it may spare hands to make amends for the 
additional labor which high culture of the soil makes necessary. 

6. But in connection with this, it is to be noted that the first 
effect of improved methods of manufacturing is greatly to cheapen 
products. This places them within reach of a greater proportion 
of the people, and with the progress of civilization, they come to 
use articles of which their ancestors knew nothing. All kinds of 
products of the soil and of the shops are improved and multiplied, 
and what in past times were considered as luxuries have come to 
be regarded as necessaries. This process is going on at the pres- 
ent time, so that with the improvement of machinery and produc- 
tion, the demand easily keeps pace. It does not require several 
generations for the use of an article of luxury to come to be 
regarded as a "necessary;" a very few years is sufficient, and a 
succession of such results may take place within the same gener- 
ation. Then does this multiplication of wants co-operate with 
the law of diminishing products from the soil and the mines, and 
with the increase of the population, to antagonize the effects of 
improvement in farm implements and manufacturing machinery. 
At present this antagonizing influence is not so much felt, 
although people, in spite of all our labor-saving machinery, have 
to work as hard as ever. This is the case even while the pres- 
sure of population is constantly relieved by emigration. It is 
where the earth is filled up, and there are no more wild lands to 
subdue that the indulgence of luxurious habits, formed in times 
of superabundant production, will tell most severely against the 
adequate supply of human wants. Then if no new wants were 
thus developed when production outstripped population, we may 
be sure that the demands of population would eventually catch 



Sec. 182.I over-population. 333 

up with the supply. Generally, increase of numbers under abun- 
dance is steady and rapid; but the same continuous increase can- 
not be true of methods and inventions which further production. 
These advance by leaps, and its indefinite continued progress 
cannot be counted on. Hence, population would come up to 
the supply even if new wants were not developed; but when 
we add the enormous demand brought into existence by these 
new wants, the demand, almost without interval for the taking of 
breath, keeps pace with the supply; so that population and the 
wants of population are ever pressing against the boundaries; in 
other words, the wants of mankind are ever driving the laborer 
to the utmost of his endurance to keep up the level of the supply. 
And with the occupancy of all the arable surface of the earth, and 
the soil taxed to its utmost for the sustenance of the greatest 
possible population, there will be no relaxation in the demand for 
labor. And long before this time, the alternative may be between 
the further increase of population with a corresponding retrench- 
ment of wants, and the checking of population without such 
retrenchment. In India where population is fully up to the 
supply of food, great famines, in which millions perish, follow 
one another in rapid succession. Population is kept down by 
starvation, a province sometimes losing more than a fourth of its 
people before relief can be obtained. And even when actual 
famine does not exist, the people are quite commonly in a 
chronic state of semi-starvation ; and what is true in this respect 
of India is very largely true of the great empire of China. It 
is not to be calculated that such will be the fate of the whole 
population of the earth when it reaches the maximum limit of 
supply. The greater intelligence and system which it is to be 
hoped will then prevail, may prevent this painful method of 
keeping population within the bounds of an assured and liberal 
support. But by whatever method population may be kept 
down, there will be more or less of painfulness, whether it be by 
voluntary restraint or by the debilitating effects of luxury and 
extravagance in a part of the population. And in default of this, 
there must still be pain; for if, in consequence of over-popula- 



334 DIFFICULTIES OF LIMITATION. \Chap. XX VI I. 

tion in the future, it shall become necessary to forego the gratifica- 
tion of wants which have become established through long habit, 
it will then be not the good time to come or coming, but the good 
time gone. 

Section 183. — Any attempt to penetrate the future of the 
race must be inadequate that takes no account of the multiplica- 
tion of human wants. How this multiplication is taking place 
in our own times, every one may readily observe for himself. 
With all our power looms, sewing machines, reapers, and thresh- 
ers, men and women are as much driven as when all this work 
was done by hand with only the simplest tools. As an apt illus- 
tration of this, although verging on the ridiculous, is the fact that 
country ladies in America expend several hundred per cent, 
more labor and time in making dresses with the aid of sewing 
machines, than in former times without such aid. More than 
this, the intricacies of the art have sprung into existence a class of 
professionals who have their shops in every village, and even go 
from house to house, exercising their craft. The writer is able 
to recall the time when a woman, having charge of a family of 
five or six, would do all the housework and the washing, spin the 
flax, weave the flannel and jeans, cut out and make her own and 
her girls' dresses, and the father's and boys' suits, and then appar- 
ently have as much leisure as a woman with such a family now has, 
who neither spins the flax, nor weaves the jeans and flannel, nor 
makes the family's clothes. [By a concidence of suggestion it 
happens that both Larned and myself have used this same case 
to illustrate the same subject. I quote only one sentence giving 
the reason why sewing machines have utterly failed to accom- 
plish what one would have taken to be their most obvious pur- 
pose — the saving of labor: "Because a despicable, senseless, and 
most vulgar vanity in that minor fraction of mankind which has 
the power, more or less, to command labor, at will, refuses to let 
clothing be cheapened, and persists in the contemptible display 
of an ability to possess and to wear clothes which cost much 
labor." — (Talks about Labor, 125).] Some way or other does 
it turn out that the exactions of taste and vanity in some of their 



Sec. i8j.] increase of wants. 335 

many forms do keep up with the facilities of gratification, and 
only abate in their demands when compelled to by the more 
urgent claims of subsistence. And the vain and frivolous tastes 
are precisely those which govern most family circles and the 
great mass of human beings. Money made and used for their 
gratification is money made and used for the great ends of life; 
time spent and money used for the gratification of finer tastes 
and the carrying of higher purposes, goes without large sym- 
pathy, and is condemned as unprofitable. But even with the 
abatement of the coarser vanities, we should probably be no better 
off than before on the score of economy. Even if the frivoli- 
ties of taste should become less exacting, they will only abate 
their demands on the origin of higher tastes which are still more 
expensive. 

So far as the labor for supply is concerned, the increase of 
wants does even more than the increase of population to render 
that labor more difficult. "In many respects it is more difficult 
to live to-day than it was a hundred years ago." — (Fiske.) The 
gratification of newly originated wants consumes capital which 
otherwise would assist labor in procuring a needful supply for 
the simple wants of life. What is gained by improved methods 
is lost by extravagant consumption, and there is even less leisure 
than before. "The factor that multiplies is the ever growing 
wants of man" (Walker), and there seems to be no limit what- 
ever to the multiplication of human wants; and even if popula- 
tion should be kept within bounds, the fewer people with more 
wants would be in some sense an equivalent for the greater 
number of people with fewer wants. It is difficult to see how 
the pressure on labor is to be removed in the future, unless there 
be a revolution in human nature of a character not yet fore- 
shadowed. When the habitable earth is full of people who are 
full of wants, there can be no relief, as now, by removal to new 
lands ; — what is the guaranty that there will then be a full and 
constant flow of the means of gratification? Is it not rather 
to be apprehended that there will be inevitable stinting, and 
that, too, as the first necessary step for relief which must come 



336 DIFFICULTIES OF LIMITATION. [Chap. XXVII. 

in one or the other of two forms? Either, population must then 
be reduced, or else there must be a systematic abatement of 
wants. 

Section 184. — But will the earth fill up everywhere as at 
present in India, China, Japan, and parts of Europe? The law 
of history in this respect probably is, that, according to the state 
of society, the inhabitants multiply till they have taken up all 
the available room. While peoples are hunters only, a great 
deal of territory is required for the sustenance of a small popu- 
lation. But unless mutual extermination or disease in the 
locality prevent, tribes of hunters, even, come to overtake the 
means of subsistence. If they had never done so, mankind 
might have ever remained hunters. The scarcity of food led to 
other devices, and animals were secured, domesticated, and 
cared for, and hunters then became shepherds. This gave to 
the territory greater capacity for inhabitants, and it filled up 
accordingly. And, again, when there came to be too many 
people for the means of subsistence, another step was taken, 
and agriculture was adopted, and thus room was made for a 
still denser population. Commerce was all along growing, and 
by-and-by manufactures sprung up, industries were diversified, 
and by a sort of miracle, the area expanded for more people. 
Cities sprang into existence, and the country filled up to the 
extent of its possibilities. 

During all the time there were two counter tendencies devel- 
oping side by side: — (1) the facilities for supplying the means 
of living, and (2) the multiplication of wants requiring con- 
stantly more of such means, the former steadily gaining on 
the latter, and consequently making a greater population possi- 
ble. The vanities were active from the first; but it was only 
after commerce and manufactures had considerable development 
that the means of gratification were at hand to stimulate them 
into new and diversified forms. With the advance of civiliza- 
tion they appear to multiply in geometrical progression. But, 
notwithstanding the large proportion of human labor which is 
expended in the gratification of the petty vanities of life, such 



Sec. I#4.] FILLING UP OF THE EARTH. 337 

are the improved facilities for production, that the capacity of 
territory for population has increased up to the present time, and 
will no doubt continue to increase for some time to come. But 
emigration has been and still is largely due to the filling up and 
overflowing of population. It was this, no doubt, under more 
primitive conditions that sent the hordes of intruders from Asia 
into Europe, and kept up the stream with intervals for centuries. 
It is this that is at the present time sending its millions from 
Europe to America. Time is required for the filling up; but time 
is plenty, and the filling up always goes on till the overflow begins. 

I am well aware that a high civilization keeps down multipli- 
cation in certain classes, and if these were the only classes in 
society, or if all the people could rise to these social strata, 
population might generally come to a stand-still with the advance 
of civilization. But all classes cannot so rise. The very exist- 
ence of the "upper classes" which fail at length to multiply and 
keep their numbers good by natural increase, could not be main- 
tained but for the "lower classes," on which they rest for vitality 
and support. It is these lower classes that multiply; and never 
fear, there will be such classes in some country or other, indeed, 
in many countries, if not in all, to multiply and run over into ter- 
ritorial vacancies wherever they may be found. It is true that 
nations sometimes decline in population from other than phys- 
ical causes. They may not have worn out their soil nor suffered 
rn their commercial position, but, like provinces of the Roman 
empire in later times, they may be harassed by mal-administra- 
tion and crushed out of existence by the burthen of taxation. 
But if not prevented by political and social disability, every 
country will in time fill up to the extent of its civilized capacity 
as formed by its industrial, commercial, and physical conditions. 

The discovery of great continents is quite recent, and hence 
there is at present a large outlet for emigration, but this will in 
time come to an end, and the earth will be full of people 
according to the enlarged capacity which higher civilization gives. 
If that should be, what then ? Long before that time, and still 
more then, there must be a curtailing of wants, luxuries must 



33^ DIFFICULTIES OF LIMITATION. \Chap. XXVII. 

be dispensed with, and the many must learn to do with the 
simple necessaries of life, and with food in its simplest and 
cheapest forms. 

Section 185. — One of the consequences of the compression 
of population by the earth's limits, would be a change in the 
character of human food. The dearer kinds of food must go 
out of use as want pinches, and the cheaper kinds would come 
more and more into use. Flesh would be dispensed with, and 
all food, it may be, grown direct from the soil. This state of 
things has already been reached in China and India, where 
density of population has long made the supply of food the 
most urgent of economical problems. In Europe, the poorer 
people have to do almost wholly without meat, and even in some 
American localities there is a tendency in the same direction. 
It is true that under favorable changes in modern economics, 
there is sometimes improvement in this respect, as in England, 
Germany, and other European countries, during the last forty 
years ; but it is easy to err in taking such tendencies to be per- 
petual. It must be remembered that our present civilization is 
in its upward curve. The improvement of machinery and the 
unparalleled increase of capital, the virgin lands of new conti- 
nents, and the open fields thus secured for emigration wherever 
numbers press, together with increased facilities for intelligence 
and transportation, and the light thrown upon the results of 
economical habits — have all contributed in some measure to 
improve the condition of the poorer classes ; but these tenden- 
cies have their limit, and will have their day, to be followed by 
population, even in the most prosperous countries, up to the 
limits of supply. Most of these tendencies unfortunately con- 
tain within themselves the very conditions which must, at last, 
thwart their own beneficent action by the rapid multiplication of 
numbers, till there will no longer be relief through the outlet for 
emigration to virgin lands. 

Our vegetarians would not regard restriction to vegetable food 
as an evil, but as a good ; however, this view is greatly open to 
question. It may be laid down as a law, that the simpler organ- 



Sec. I#5.] RELATION OF FOOD TO INTELLECT. 339 

isms do with simpler forms of food than the more complex organ- 
isms. The higher forms must get their more diversified nourish- 
ment by utilizing what other digestive systems than their own 
have elaborated, as in the case of carnivorous animals ; or else, 
they must obtain it through the action of a complicated digestive 
system of their own, as in the case of herbivorous animals. 
More of the energy of the system is required to manufacture 
nourishment out of grains, roots, fruits, and vegetables, than out 
of flesh, and this is indicated by the shorter and simpler diges- 
tive course of the flesh-eating animals. And, on a well known 
principle which governs vital action, the more expenditure there 
is in digestion, the less there is left for the remaining uses of the 
system. This principle has of late been graphically illustrated 
in the experiments of Dr. Angelo Mosso, of the University of 
Turin, with the plethysmograph, in which it is shown that the 
least ripple of emotion, by increasing the circulation of the 
brain, lessens the circulation in the arm. 

Beside digestion, there are two other general forms of use or 
expenditure, — muscular exertion and mental exertion. Our 
work-animals are vegetable feeders, for an obvious reason, and 
they have great muscular endurance. This, however, does not 
tell against the principle in question. Before we attribute to it 
such value, we must know how far this muscular exertion 
trenches on the mental energies of the creature. The most 
intelligent animals other than the anthropoid, size allowed for, 
are doubtless animals which feed mainly on flesh, as the fox and 
dog. The greater size of the horse and elephant rule them out 
in a comparison of this kind. The principle of correlation, or 
that, in consequence of which, expenditure in one direction 
weakens the resources of expenditure in another direction, is 
one so well established that we should be safe to reason upon it 
deductively. If in addition to the larger outlay for the digestion 
of vegetable food, there is by the habit of the animal a large 
outlay for muscular exertion, the resources of energy for mental 
action are still further weakened. The best conditions for men- 
tal action and development would appear to be, the least possi- 



34° DIFFICULTIES OF LIMITATION. [Chap. XXVII. 

ble outlay of energy in the proper digestion and assimilation of 
food, with such moderate muscular exercise as the healthy 
activity of the vital functions requires. It is with man, however, 
that we are especially concerned. 

Section 186. — The so-called highest peoples, the most intel- 
lectual, those who have subordinated other peoples, and have 
made for the most part the known history of the world, are not 
the exclusive flesh-eaters, or vegetable eaters, but such as lay 
both kingdoms of nature under contribution for food, and add 
to this variety of nature by the appliances of art in the prepara- 
tion. The greatest possible variety of food, compounded and 
prepared in the most nourishing and digestible forms, is no doubt 
the necessary condition of the highest manifestation of the 
human powers. "A people who live on rice will usually be 
found unfit to do anything better than grow rice. Monotony 
in food, as in other things, begets dullness." — (Chesney.) If 
this be true, simplification of diet with the growing density of 
population will detract from the aggregate of available human 
energy for sustaining the higher manifestations of mind. If by 
the loss of the more nourishing forms of food to be found in 
the flesh of animals, the digestive organs are more heavily taxed, 
while at the same time the muscular system is little or not at all 
exempted from labor, there is necessarily less energy for mental 
action, growth, and development. 

To this must be added the organic disadvantages attendant 
upon making the change from a more nourishing to a less 
nourishing diet. Man's digestive apparatus appears to be best 
adapted to a mixed diet, lacking the complication of the vege- 
table feeders, and being more complex than that of the carnivor- 
ous species. Most of the discussion concerning man's natural 
diet assumes that whatever is natural has been so determined by 
decree, and is fixed and unchangeable. It has usually failed to 
perceive what points require to be made clear and definite. 
According to Flourens, "When man discovered fire and learned 
to soften, melt, and prepare animal and vegetable substances by 
cooking, he became able to nourish himself on every living thing. 



Sec. l£6.] HABIT ESTABLISHES THE NATURAL 341 

and to avail himself of all the regimes. Man has then two 
forms of diet: one natural, primitive, instinctive, whereby he is 
frugivorous; the other artificial and wholly due to his intelligence, 
whereby he is omnivorous." — (Longevete Humaine, 127). The 
author uses the term "artificial," as dependent on intelligence, in 
contra-distinction to the term "natural" which, under primitive 
conditions, depended on instinct. But we may suggest that 
what people are used to for many generations, becomes in a sense 
natural. The natural is not established by decree, but by habit. 
The art of cooking food is very much older than history ; and 
we may properly say that cooked food forms a large part of the 
natural food of civilized people. What has been the habit of 
any race, animal or human, for myriads of years, cannot be 
changed without a shock to the organism; and if the change be 
from a richer diet to a poorer one, the effect must be deleterious, 
and the tendency must be toward degeneracy. Even if the 
body should not degenerate on the smaller resources of energy 
in consequence of the greater labor of digestion, still there is less 
energy at liberty for mental uses, and the mind must fall off in 
the average measure of its activities. [Dr. T. L. Nichols testi- 
fies that he writes from twelve to fifteen hours a day on milk, 
brown bread, and American dried apples, the whole costing in 
London but ten cents a day. He says : "My stomach has such 
light work that all life flows freely to the brain, and I can work 
on hour after hour." — (Holbrook's Hygiene of the Brain and 
Nerves). People have been known to abstain quite altogether 
from food in order to be inspirationally blessed, and with grati- 
fying success. Dr. Nichols is making progress in this direction, 
since he regards the above diet as unnecessarily generous, and 
proposes to abridge it by dispensing with the milk. Such an 
experiment is not quite conclusive, unless we know the quality 
of work done under such regimen and the length of time it 
was kept up.] 

Whole nations are at this moment suffering from stinted nour- 
ishment. The Hindoos, a gentle, harmless, industrious people, 
are only plodding, not brilliant, and are able to offer little resist- 



342 DIFFICULTIES OF LIMITATION. [Chap. XXVII. 

ance to aggression. They are without the energy and enterprise 
which subdue the earth and turn every circumstance to advan- 
tage. There are places in India having a population of one 
thousand to the square mile; and yet fifteen thousand square 
miles of fertile lands in the valley of the Brahmapootra lie in 
jungle, and wild beasts have long been the terror of people even 
in the villages. Exclusive vegetable diet may, indeed, be com- 
patible with great physical strength in man — it certainly is in 
the horse and ox; but what we insist upon is that a mixed and 
greatly diversified diet is best for the whole man. 

The optimistic assumption is pleasant — that there will never 
be over-population, that wants will be moderated, that capital 
will greatly multiply so that little labor will be required to make 
a highly rational people happy — but, like many a pleasant thing, 
it may be delusive. Symmetry requires a certain correspond- 
ence of proportion between mind and body; and if little 
demand for muscular exertion should be the condition of future 
civilization, the physical will be almost sure to deteriorate; and 
if it becomes enfeebled through want of use, the mind will, to a 
certain extent and in time, partake of that feebleness. The 
body must be kept up even to a high standard of vigor if the 
mind is to be maintained at a similar standard, and this cannot 
be done without exercising the bodily powers. This is true for 
the race. A few generations might cultivate the brain at the 
expense of the body, but eventually the mind would begin to 
degenerate. This is frequently exemplified in the history of 
families. People from the country, with well developed bodies 
and with some opportunities for culture, drift to the cities, and 
take the lead in civilization. In a few generations these degen- 
erate and die out, and others take their place. More than half 
the people in London were born outside that city. Such is the 
eternal round of rising in the physical and setting in the neglect 
of it. And all history teaches that, up to the present time, if 
people exert their physical energies to the highest point of devel- 
opment compatible with intellect, they must be compelled to do 
so by the exigencies of life. If it is different in the future, it 



Sec. l86.] GREATEST FOOD SUPPLY. 343 

must be by a change in the human constitution; a change which 
is theoretically conceivable, but which has little logical weight 
till it is taken successfully out of theory and put in the way of 
becoming practical. 

The statement concerning the loss to mankind of the more 
highly elaborated forms of food, has been made on the assump- 
tion that the earth would support the greatest number of inhabi- 
tants, to dispense with such food. It may be doubted, however, 
whether the fertility of the soil could be maintained under the 
exclusive culture of vegetable products with a greater supply of 
food, than could be afforded under mixed husbandry, including 
live stock. But even if more nourishment could be produced 
in a given time by the rearing of cattle, it is probable that 
the highest possible product would admit of only a moderate 
proportion of flesh food, being altogether an inadequate supply; 
consequently, the main idea of this discussion would still be 
true, and only slightly narrowed in its application. 

The considerations of this and the two preceding sections, 
though by no means foreign to the subject, are yet to a tanta- 
lizing degree indeterminate in character; and the brief space 
into which it has been necessary to compress them, renders the 
statement no doubt unsatisfactory. Disputed ground has been 
rapidly traversed without the opportunity of anticipating criti- 
cism or of qualifying. The imperfect statement is submitted to 
the intelligent reader for what it may be worth in the way of 
suggestion, as relating to an inquiry which has interest for the 
life of current times, as well as for that which is to be in the 
future. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

THE FUTURE OF THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT. 

Section 187. — The future of the environment has neces- 
sarily been somewhat discussed in previous chapters, and little 
remains for this except general considerations and a brief refer- 
ence to some of the leading points. 

We may admit the equality of alternating action in the organic 
system; that is, its harmony as a "moving equilibrium." This 
may, theoretically, and in a qualified sense, does no doubt 
sometimes actually obtain for a time; but between this organ- 
ism and its environment the supposed equilibrium is a very 
different thing. If not disturbed by external discords, the 
organism might come to act on the environment and be acted 
upon by it in a harmonious way; but disturbance constantly 
affects it from without, and is so fitful and capricious withal, 
that no possible conditions of orderly adaptation between it and 
the organism can obtain. [After the above was written, on 
turning for another purpose to my copy of Spencer's Social 
Statics, first edition, London, I was quite surprised to find the 
following note on the margin of page 63, which was penciled 
there on reading the volume fifteen years before in camp at 
Chattanooga: "If mankind have been half a million years or 
so attaining to their present state of adaptedness, how many 
million years will it take them to become perfectly adapted to 
the environment? If the outer conditions mold the man as the 
author claims, and these conditions are constantly changing, as 
they always have and I presume always will, is it possible for 
mankind to catch up with those conditions, since time is requi- 
site for the molding process?"] Constant changes of tempera- 
ture, for example, are a constant source of organic discord; and 



Sec. l88.1 DEATH THE PRICE OF PHYSICAL HARMONY. 345 

with all the appliances of civilization yet at hand, these changes 
cannot always be happily met by the organism. Immense 
downpours of rain and accompanying floods have always done 
mischief, and instead of making headway against these sources 
of discord, the evil becomes constantly greater as civilization 
advances. As I write (October, 1878), word comes of a great 
wind and rain storm along the entire eastern coast of the United 
States, by which, notwithstanding the warnings of the Signal 
office, many lives and millions of property have been destroyed. 
And the like is not an exceptional but a comparatively regular 
occurrence. As long as earthquakes occur, they will be attended 
with disaster, and, as already stated, the more populous and 
improved the earth is, the greater the disasters will be. The 
same is true of hurricanes, monsoons, typhoons, and every form 
of meteorological violence. If the coast of India had been a 
wilderness or a desert, the terrible destruction of life and prop- 
erty would not have taken place from the fatal wave which 
recently broke upon its coast. 

Section 188. — Then it really appears that so far from getting 
rid of these physical disturbances as the world grows older, they 
are likely to become more hurtful than ever, since by the very 
conditions of civilization, life and its belongings are more at the 
mercy of the destructive agencies. This, of course, assumes that 
they shall remain unabated in power. But suppose they abate: 
the winds shall not blow so furiously, nor bring with them such 
sudden alternations of heat and cold, and the rains shall never 
come down in floods, nor abstain from coming till the earth is 
parched, what would be the cost of this gain ? We are not 
acquainted at present with any means of avoiding these extremes, 
except by a diminution of the sun's power, which mainly causes 
them, and such diminution would entail worse evils than those 
with which we are now afflicted. A sufficient reduction of tem- 
perature to do away with storms and floods and sudden changes 
of wind and temperature, would do away with all the higher 
forms of life; and death would be the price of harmony in the 
elements. 



34-6 PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT. \Chap. XXVIII. 

As long as earthquakes continue, sentient existence will suffer 
from their action. And if these subterranean forces should ever 
cease, the immunity from suffering thus secured would be at the 
cost no less than that of ultimate extinction, since with the 
cessation of upheaval, the waters would at once gain on the area of 
the land, and continue until the ocean should cover the entire 
surface of the earth. Such would be the result if the sun's heat 
should remain unabated, and all the water should remain then 
as now at the surface; but on the abatement of the subterranean 
forces, it is believed that the water would gradually sink into the 
interior of the earth. With this reduction of water on the sur- 
face, the present area of dry land might still be maintained, with 
a necessary change, however, in the rain system of the earth, 
which would greatly reduce its capacity for production. And 
with the disappearance of all the water from the surface, or 
most of it, the earth would become uninhabitable. 

Radiation from the solar system into space is constantly going 
on. There may be some compensation for this loss by the fall 
of meteors, but this supply has its limitations, and the surplus 
of radiation must eventually tell on the conditions of existence. 
Heat as a form of motion is necessary to all forms of motion, 
not excepting those which constitute life. The doom of all 
organic existence is legibly written in the dissipation of energy. 
The tendency toward equilibrium is the tendency toward death. 
Physicists tell us that the earth is fated to become as the moon 
now is. As the cooling process goes on, the waters will sink 
away from the surface, and even the atmosphere will at last dis- 
appear; and life will vanish with the conditions of life. This, 
it seems, would be the case even if the sun should retain its 
present heating power, as the condition of the moon proves. 
But the sun itself will lose the power of imparting to surround- 
ing planets the stimulus of organic existence, and then death 
must be universal throughout the system. 

The optimist, however, says: "O, you are looking too far 
ahead; this remote future concerns us very little; it is with the 
present and the near future we have to do." Very well; but the 



Sec. l8p.] THE DESCENDING CURVE. 347 

optimists' "harmony" and " perfection " have not prevailed in 
the past, do not in the present, and will not in the near future, 
and if ever, it must be in the remote future — just where, as we 
have seen, in its physical aspects, the Utopia is liable most 
signally to fail. We must take the past and the present as the 
basis from which to forecast the near future, and we must adhere 
to the type for which the past and present fairly give warrant. 
To determine what that type is has been the end and aim of 
this investigation from first to last. And in order to understand 
it at all, we must contemplate the subject in its entirety, and 
that comprehends the past, the present, and as much of the 
future as there is reasonable warrant for. As remote as an ice- 
age or a material diminution of the sun's heat may be, a con- 
sideration of the problem of life and happiness on the earth as 
a member of the solar system, compels us to contemplate these 
contingencies. 

Our knowledge of the direct elements of the problem relates 
only to the past and to the current history of life on earth. In 
this we have seen that the physical discordances, in the midst of 
which man lives, tell rather more severely against him as he 
advances to the higher planes of existence. This is the ascend- 
ing curve: how will it be in the descending curve? After the 
race has passed the zenith of its existence and has entered on 
the descending course, what will be its experience with these dis- 
cordances in the environment? Mention has already been made 
of the evils which would attend decline in the violent action o£ 
the natural forces, — that with this decline there would be neces- 
sarily a falling off in the conditions of life. The race, no doubt 
more conscious then than at present of the limitations of destiny, 
would not as now contemplate the future with the certainty of 
progress, but with the certainty of retrogression, gradual decline, 
and ultimate extinction. 

Section 189. — But it is not necessary to this study to look 
so far ahead, or to lay stress on doubtful elements of the prob- 
lem. Limitations and discordances threaten to spring up in the 
near future. The gradual drifting of our northern winter toward 



34-8 PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT. [Chap. XXVIII. 

the earth's greatest distance from the sun, even under present low 
eccentricity, must deteriorate our climate and render it less favor- 
able for civilization along parallels where the greatest prosperity 
now exists. The time is not far distant when the means of heat 
and light which civilization requires, so far as dependent on their 
present chief source, must become constantly more expensive, 
costing more of human energy for an adequate supply. The 
washing away of our mountain, hilly, and sloping lands will not 
abate, and in the near future, it will tell seriously against the 
prosperity of many and extensive areas in our own and other 
countries. And here it is not merely the actual loss of land 
that does the mischief. With the lowering of hills and moun- 
tains there will be less condensation from the clouds, and regions 
now fertile will suffer for the want of rain. Add to this the 
gradual descent of water and its crystallization in the interior of 
the earth, of which there is at present strong evidence, and the 
quantity of rain will be still further reduced, and the extent of 
desert still more increased. 

In the course of an interesting article on the Probable Future 
of the Human Race (Smithsonian Report, 1875), Alphonse de 
Cjbndolle passes under review the obstructions likely to fall in 
the way of future progress, and says: "To recapitulate, our 
period, or that which will follow for the next thousand years, will 
be characterized by a great increase of population, and mingling 
of races, and a prosperity more or less marked. Then will 
probably follow a long period of diminution of population, of 
separation of peoples, and of decadence." It is not at all 
improbable that the people living in the future not more remote 
from us than we are from ancient civilizations of Greece and 
Rome, will look back upon our period as one of the happiest in 
the whole history of the race. Novelties constantly arising for 
the refreshing of interest in the activities of life, the frequent 
changes on the great theatre of civilization, the improvements, 
the breaking down of all manner of limitations to the free play 
of individual energy and enterprise, the peaceful crumbling away 
of the old, and the welcome substitution of the new, the hopeful- 



Sec. i8g.\ moderate expectation not misanthropy. 349 

ness everywhere thus engendered, — all these will take such 
prominence in history as to make us the envy of those who live 
in far distant times. We do not appreciate our rare privileges; 
they who come after will give little attention to the current evils 
we so magnify; and if their probable view of it, as here suggested, 
should lead us to think more of our own brilliant period, and 
dream less of impossible paradises in the future, we should prob- 
ably lose nothing of real value to the present. 

We must remember that, as history reveals it, the destiny of 
man on earth is an alternating one, sometimes up, sometimes 
down; and it by no means follows that after an intervening 
depression, the next ascending movement will be greater than any 
before. It may, or it may not fall short. It is an error, readily 
engendered by the brilliant achievements of our own period 
beyond anything in the past, to assume that each succeeding 
upward curve must necessarily rise the highest. Our own period 
of improvement is the only one following the Greek which has 
surpassed that — and surpassed it in the aggregate only a little 
\\ T ay. There is hardly any doubt that the present upward curve 
is the highest the world will ever know. The question, of course, 
turns upon the two points, how high it will rise, and how long a 
period of man's existence on earth it will cover. 

Let it be here observed that, while these considerations are 
fatal to extreme optimism, they do not establish pessimism, nor 
afford any warrant for malevolence. The declining period of a 
man's life is not necessarily a period of gloom, but has its forms 
of compensation, so it may be in the like period or periods of 
the race's existence. But as inevitable drawbacks have attended 
all along the great ascending curve of human existence, like 
drawbacks somewhat modified, and increased rather than 
diminished in their depressive action, will attend in all the 
descending curves. The inevitable in the physical discordances 
of man's environment affords no ground for the indulgence of 
misanthropy. Man was organized in the midst of these discord- 
ances, and they are not incompatible with a great predominance 
of happiness in life. They are, however, incompatible with the 



35° PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT. [Chap. XXVIII. 

chimera of equilibrium between man and his environment, and 
with every form of the millennial or paradisiacal notion. 

Section 190. — I am aware that there are imaginative persons, 
whose mental methods are not strictly scientific, who believe and 
teach that physical perfection is possible. Fourier will create in a 
most arbitrary manner a "boreal crown," a sort of electrical sun 
at the north pole, from which shall be diffused a genial and life- 
giving influence, making the climate and seasons throughout 
paradisiacal. Oranges will grow in Siberia and the sea become 
as delicious as nectar. There is no warrant in known physical 
laws for such assumptions, and we may pass them by as purely 
gratuitous. It would be less arbitrary and just as easy, perhaps, 
to set the earth's axis perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic 
and level down the surface a la Burnet — and then get the para- 
dise only by a perpetual miracle. But Winwood Reade excels 
in this direction: "Finally," he says, "men will master the 
forces of nature; they will become themselves architects of sys- 
tems, manufacturers of worlds." And he thinks they will 
"invent immortality" on earth, and visit from planet to planet 
and from sun to sun, not waiting like Thomas Dick for these 
privileges till after the transformation of death, beyond which 
the imagination is not under restraint from the impassable bar- 
riers of fact. Others, more moderate in their expectations, 
entertain the idea of controlling the meteorological elements, 
regulating the quantity of rainfall, tempering and directing the 
winds, affording harmless escape to the subterranean forces, and 
the like. An American writer will have volcanoes die out and 
earthquakes cease, while the water will sink away from the sur- 
face and leave more dry land for the use of man, — apparently 
forgetting that it is the lifting power of the internal forces that 
has made, maintained, and added to our land area, and that, if 
the proportion of the water area is considerably reduced, there will 
be less rainfall with more land needing it, and consequently larger 
areas of desert. However, this is to be obviated by means of 
hot water from the interior of the earth carried in pipes through 
the soil, while a covering of glass overhead will shut out the 



Sec. ipo. visionary views. 35 1 

winter, and production will go on the year round on earth as in 
paradise. Machinery will be driven by earthquake-power, and 
life on earth will be a continual holiday. According to Von 
Prittwitz (quoted by Roscher), capital is to become so abundant 
that it will command no interest. The earth will become a 
universal park, and people may migrate like birds to escape the 
cold of winter. Heat will be drawn from the interior of the 
earth by artesian wells, or generated by the friction of metallic 
plates driven by wind-power. 

No progress has as yet been made in directions apparently so 
desirable, and until we discover a scientific departure toward 
such results, we are compelled to pass these conjectures by as 
purely visionary. Man does, indeed, do wonderful things, but 
usually in unlooked-for ways, while the prophets are gaping in a 
different direction. While, for example, Fourier is looking for 
anti-whales to draw our ships in calms, the contemptible jet of 
steam from a boiling tea-pot is made to draw the ships, and 
there is no use for the mythic whales except to lash the foam of 
visionary speculation. 

The music of the meteorological elements is full of discord 
and broken measure, but man has had no choice but dance to 
it, and dance to it he must with little assurance of its improve- 
ment in harmony. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

ORIGIN AND CONFLICT OF NATURAL LAWS. 

Section 191. — A prevailing idea concerning the natural laws 
is that they were created by the fiat of the Almighty, This is a 
modern application by survival of somewhat primitive ideas, 
and involves the mental confusion common to such survival. 
It assumes that natural laws, like statute laws, have been created, 
and are executed by some conscious and competent authority. 
Natural law, however, is but the orderly succession of phenom- 
ena, the invariable sequence of cause and effect, the uniformity 
of proceeding in nature. We refer all phenomena to the action 
of forces, and the idea of an outside and arbitrary power enact- 
ing laws for the government of such action, is foreign and offen- 
sive to scientific habits of thought. This action must take place 
in a uniform manner, because such action is conditioned by the 
inherent and essential nature of the forces, and there is no other 
way in which they can act. Given the existence of the forces 
of determinate character, and their action must be invariable 
and sequent ; — there is, consequently, but one possible universe, 
and that is the one we have. [Diodorus, the. stoic (according to 
Cicero), Abelard, Wicliffe, Thomas Aquinas, Hobbes, and Wil- 
liam Godwin held that nothing is possible except that which 
actually takes placej. It is convenient to speak of this action 
by regular sequence, as natural law ; it is an example of the 
figurative use of words, which gains currency from its aptness, 
and maintains its place on the sufficient warrant of mental habit. 

A different school of philosophers hold that these laws are 
eternal. This opinion, without qualification, is less plausible 
than that of creation. The conception of the eternity of natural 



Sec. ipi.~\ NATURAL LAWS. 353 

law posits a statical and uniform system of nature j while all the 
developments of science compel us to regard nature as dynam- 
ical, and moving in cycles of change. Nature is a complex suc- 
cession of actions. It is never precisely the same for two con- 
secutive moments ; it is a continual development. New forms 
of action are constantly coming into existence, and these new 
forms of action have their fitting laws ; and the laws are no older 
than the forms of action. 

Let us illustrate from a general view of the solar system. We 
have no choice but to shape considerations in the light of the 
nebular hypothesis. The quantity of its forces may be eternal 
in the sense that changes of form neither increase nor diminish 
them; but the forms of their manifestation are not eternal. 
When our system was in the primitive condition of cosmical 
mist, we can conceive of but two forms of action besides those 
connected with light, — physical attraction and repulsion. Besides 
those which relate to light, the only laws then in existence in 
the system were the simple physical laws which govern attraction 
and repulsion in this primeval form. So far as there was move- 
ment by currents or masses, it could but have illustrated only the 
simplest laws of motion. Kepler's laws of planetary motion 
may have had a potential, but not an actual, existence, till 
planets were formed, and traveling in their orbits round the 
sun. The physical causes of light may have existed, but there 
was no light, since there was no eye on which those causes might 
act. There were no chemical laws till there had been sufficient 
radiation to permit chemical action to take place at the surface 
of the cooling mass. The law is the order of the action, and 
there can be no law of it till the action takes place. Physio- 
logical laws are now familiar enough ; but our planet had been 
coursing round the sun for millions of years before there were 
any such laws in existence. There could be no organic laws 
till there were living things. Mental laws could not ante-date 
the phenomena of mental action. There were no laws of society 
till they took form in the existence of society. So all along the 
pathway of evolution, new laws must have been coming into 



354 CONFLICT OF NATURAL LAWS. \Chap. XXIX. 

existence, because new phenomenal divergences have been con- 
stantly taking form under the complicated interaction of the 
forces of nature. 

Secton 192. — This statement of origin, however, is only pref- 
atory to a different phase of the subject, to which it is desired 
to call particular attention : the conflict of those laws, and the 
violence and discord which have attended them along the entire 
career of development from simple nebulous existence to that 
maze of complexity we call the world. As it is a figurative use 
of words to speak of natural law, so is it to speak of the con- 
flict or crossing of natural laws. All that is meant is that an 
action or an order of sequences comes in conflict with another 
action or order of sequences, and one or the other suffers limita- 
tion, disarrangement, or interruption. These actions or succes- 
sions of action belong to different categories : some are physical, 
some organic, some psychological, some social, etc. Conflict 
may take place within each division, as when physical sequences 
interfere with one another, or organic with organic ; but the 
collision is quite apt to take place across the division lines, and 
it is in this feature of the phenomena that we are most inter- 
ested in this connection. The interest clusters mainly about 
the organic within its own sphere, and where it touches on the 
physical and on the social and moral. 

A law of nature is, of course, supreme in its own realm, else it 
would not be a law. Gravity is always directly as the mass, and 
inversely as the square of the distance. Under the action of 
gravity alone the surface of the sea would be smooth and even, 
but the action of winds interferes to lift it into waves. The winds 
are, of course, due mainly to the direct and indirect action of 
gravity on the atmosphere of unequal density; and all the dis- 
turbances which grow out of the relations of the land, the sea, 
and the air to one another, are chiefly due to the influence of 
the earth's gravity and the sun's heat on these related and unlike 
bodies. The succession of occurrences which might character- 
ize the phenomena would be very different if these bodies had 
no mutual relations with one another; but, being so related, the 



SeC. I(?3.] LOWER LAWS THWARTING HIGHER. 355 

series of changes in one interferes with, and in many ways modi- 
fies, the series of changes in the others. 

The magnet may take hold of objects and move them in a 
line directly opposite to that in which gravity acts, but this does 
not suspend the Newtonian law; the object only yields to the 
action of the stronger force affecting it for the time being. If 
the action of the magnet is cut off, the object yields to the pull 
of the earth's attraction and falls. The stronger force of the 
magnet acting in a contrary direction had interfered with and 
prevented the characteristic results of gravity. This interference 
of one force obeying its laws with the action of another force 
obeying its laws, is a common and necessary phenomenon in 
physical nature. 

Section 193. — The union of carbon with oxygen has its 
laws, and is always accompanied with the evolution of heat. 
There are also laws of vital action, and if these be interfered 
with, the integrity of the organism is put in jeopardy. If the 
organism falls into the fire it is destroyed. The organic laws are 
not destroyed, nor are they ever suspended ; there is no miracle 
performed, but in this particular instance the conditions of 
organic action are annulled, and such action can no longer take 
place. When these forms of action meet in a struggle for pre- 
cedence, the physical law proves to be the stronger, and deprives 
the organic law of one of its subjects. Conflict between the 
physical and organic modes of action, with its accompanying 
violence of method and result, has had place on earth ever since 
the rise of organic forms. The plant cherished for beauty or 
use, the fruit-bud freighted with promise of its luscious product, 
may be cut off by an untimely frost, and sad disappointment 
carried to many an anxious worker. So striking an instance of 
defeat by the action of natural causes, and indeed so common, 
has afforded to the antagonists of natural theology the occasion 
to insist that the course of nature is as likely to suggest an 
overruling power in the interest of malevolence as in that of 
beneficence. — (Alexander Campbell, W. H. Mallock, and 
others). This was no doubt the prevailing impression among 



35^ CONFLICT OF NATURAL LAWS. {Chap. XXIX. 

primitive men. From the scientific point of view, however, it 
is only the collision of one train of sequences with another, in 
which the conditions of vegetable existence are disturbed, and 
the functions of plant life greatly disordered or irretrievably 
wrecked. The hot ashes and lava which pour forth from vol- 
canoes; the sudden shock of earthquakes; protracted drought 
and parching of the soil; the flood; the fury of the winds; 
unseasonable cold and the blight of frosts, — these are forms of 
violence from which life has always suffered. Plants, fruits, 
fishes, insects, birds, beasts, have perished by millions from the 
play of the natural forces in implicit obedience to the laws of 
their action. It is no far-fetched figure of speech to say that 
these millions have perished by the clashing of the physical and 
organic laws. When man came into existence, higher forms of 
action were presented in his constitution to the lower forms of 
action, on the general arena of conflict. The history of catas- 
trophes, or the conflict of different modes of activity within and 
on the earth, shows how man has been the victim, often literally 
ground to pieces between the upper and nether millstones of 
conflicting agencies. 

Within the realm of the organic there is this same infringe- 
ment of one activity on the domain of another. One class of 
creatures is formed by structure and instinct to prey upon other 
creatures, and it could not subsist but for the exercise of this func- 
tion. Tooth and claw are formed for this particular purpose. 
The rule of life for the eater is the rule of death for the eaten. 
Almost innumerable forms of parasites live at the expense of 
other organisms. The vital functions of organic forms are thus 
cruelly interfered with, and often terminated, by other organisms 
in the legitimate exercise of their vital powers. It is hardly 
longer to be doubted that many diseases are due solely to the 
invasion of the system by microscopic forms. And, inasmuch as 
the early and lower forms of living things which were exposed 
to physical violence suffered less than do the later and higher 
forms, so must the same be true when the torture is inflicted by 
one living form upon another. Not only does man, owing to 



Sec. ip4.~\ INDIVIDUALS SACRIFICED FOR THE RACE. 357 

his higher organization, suffer more than the lower creatures 
from such causes, but he suffers from causes which do not affect 
these lower forms. Vegetables flourish in an atmosphere which 
is poisonous to animals, and beasts are exempt from injury 
where the higher races of men cannot live. It is no doubt true 
that the more complex and refined the organism is, the more 
exposed is it to the causes which interfere with the harmony of 
organic action ; and influences affect it deleteriously which do not 
affect the lower organisms at all. Parasitic life is more apt to 
fasten on it, and work out its manifold forms of organic disturb- 
ance. The seeds of disease in countless variety, which float in 
the atmosphere and pass the lower animals by, seize upon man, 
and generate organic disturbance to the weakening, often to the 
destruction of life. The conflict between these different forms 
of action loyally obedient to their own laws (if the tautology be 
allowed), results in greater pain, the higher existence on earth 
rises in the organic scale. The greater the diversity of forms of 
action, or laws of existence, the greater the liability of danger to 
the higher forms. 

Section 194. — By the use of a harmless figure, it may be said 
that the individual has its laws, and the race, of which the indi- 
vidual is but a part, has its laws, and that the two very often 
come in conflict. It has been remarked that nature cares very 
little for individuals, but everything for the race. The individual 
is often sacrificed for the good of its kind. This is common 
among the lower animals, where, through various causes, the 
feebler are cut off and the stronger conserved. However cruel 
this may seem to the individual, it preserves the vigor of the 
race, and it is the only way, under the system of nature, in which 
it can be preserved. Cruel as it seems, it is the only means of 
securing the minimum of suffering and the maximum of enjoy- 
ment. The same thing takes place among mankind through 
competition and antagonism. Among some of the lower human 
races, the old and the feeble among the young are helped out of 
the way. And then among the most civilized peoples known, 
those who have been thrown by competition into the pauper 



35^ CONFLICT OF NATURAL LAWS. [Chap. XXIX. 

class and not cared for by the nursing hand of philanthropy, 
suffer from a high rate of mortality. The deformed and enfee- 
bled, it may be for no fault of their own, are necessarily cut off 
from many of the social gratifications of a healthy and natural 
life ; and so far as this prevents the entailing of these defects on 
offspring, the race gains by the deprivation of certain of its mem- 
bers, and thus are the highest interests of society subserved by 
seeming injustice to individuals. There are two kinds of supe- 
riority to be noted here : That which is quite purely physical, 
and that of cultivated intellect, which gives power in civilization. 
Both are conserved to society by the selecting process under 
competition ; for as the vigor of the so-called upper classes 
becomes exhausted, it is replenished by constant accessions from 
the middle classes, with vigor of body as the basis for the highest 
display of mental prowess. Individuals may be the victims of 
an adverse fate ; but society maintains the even tenor of its way, 
in pursuit of the maximum of enjoyment with the minimum of 
suffering. 

This same process of selection through conflict goes on between 
races. It may seem a cruel thing, that of exterminating one 
race to make room for another ; but it is the plan of nature, and 
has been going on ever since races began. The geological 
record shows how it has been with species ; history shows how 
it has been with human races. It might be supposed that the 
finer feeling which civilization has developed in the human 
heart would conserve, if possible, the inferior races, however 
much in the way of the spread of the higher, and philanthropic 
people are busy with this problem, but so far with apparently no 
result. The discordance of contact between some of the lower 
and higher races appears to be such that there is no assured 
safety for the lower. Their rights may be held to be sacred, but 
it seems to be a prevailing principle, a higher law, whatever its 
questionable means, and whatever the cruelty it involves, that 
the human races which are strongest for the conflict, whether the 
highest or not, shall crush out the feeble and occupy the earth. 



SeC. IpS-] THE PARTICULAR AND THE GENERAL. 359 

Iii like manner, when it comes to the higher forms of human 
society, the individual, without fault of his own, often suffers 
from the prevalence of a practical rule of conduct which is 
regarded as indispensable to the constitution of society. Thus 
personal freedom involves the right of life, liberty, and the pur- 
suit of happiness to the extent of one's ability, observing the 
rules of equity; and such pursuit implies free competition in all 
the vocations of life, through which some unfortunately sink 
into indigence and misery. The individual may suffer a fate 
which appears to be tainted with injustice, under the action of a 
general principle which is almost universally extolled as fair and 
desirable. The comforts of civilized life are only procured 
through the production of labor, and it is to the interest of 
society in all possible ways to add to the facilities of such pro- 
duction. This is done mainly by accumulating the surplus 
products of labor and utilizing invention; but these things can- 
not be done under our system of personal liberty and free com- 
petition without individual suffering, from the disuse of old 
occupations, change of industries, and loss of employment. 
What is for the general good does not hesitate because of its 
bad effects on particular individuals. In like manner an institu- 
tion which is necessary for the general welfare may, in its opera- 
tions, bear down the natural rights of the individual, in excep- 
tional, it is true, but unavoidable, instances. Maternity is a 
natural, and it may be almost a sacred right; but what seems 
here to be the law of the individual is, in many instances in 
practical life, broken as a frail reed by the necessary working of 
an institution which must be conserved for the general good. 
As nature cares little for individuals but much for races, so does 
society care little for individuals but mainly for institutions. 
The general everywhere overrides the particular. 

Section 195. — First law: Migration should be free for the 
oppressed and over-crowded of all nations. The violation of 
this law would be despotism, an infringement of one of the 
most important rights of freedom; therefore, is the law one 
which is supported by high moral considerations. Second law: 



360 CONFLICT OF NATURAL LAWS. \Chap. XXIX. 

In the contest of races for room on earth, the fittest prevail. 
But the fittest are not always the highest, especially in industrial 
conflicts, such as are becoming more pronounced as civilization 
advances. A psychologically low race may crowd out a higher 
race. The Chinese may crowd out the Teuton, or abase him, 
under civil protection. If the first law be observed, the action 
of the second law may result in degradation among the people, 
by the more rapid multiplication and stingy living of the lower 
people or race. If the first law be violated by the arbitrary 
exclusion of such lower race from the privileges of immigration, 
the type of society may be sustained on a higher psychological 
level. Here we have degradation by the observance of a 
higher law, and the avoidance of degradation by the violation 
of said law. The contradiction here appears in the character 
of the law and its consequences, the law being good and its 
consequences not good. Hence we very naturally have two 
parties on the question of Chinese immigration. One party 
takes position on a priori moral grounds and says : Let immi- 
gration be free whatever the apprehension about its conse- 
quences, — the law is right and the results cannot be wrong. 
The other intrenches itself behind a posteriori considerations, and 
declares that the bad consequences of such immigration con- 
demns the assumed morality of the law which would permit it. 
The former is the view of abstract moralists, the latter of prac- 
tical statesmen. 

Another example may be given. It is a high moral law that 
the guilty alone should suffer for crime, and that the innocent 
should not so suffer. But the innocent are so made to suffer in 
many ways, and that, too, by an inexorable necessity in the 
nature of things. The people of a civilized community are so 
bound together in one, that the transgressions of any are pain- 
fully felt by fellow-members of said community. Wrongs against 
property and person are suffered by the innocent, and the prompt 
punishment of the offenders even does not and cannot make 
proper amends for the suffering. So, the transgression of parents 
may affect their children for generations to come. This hap- 



Sec. IpS-] TWO KINDS OF PHILANTHROPY. 36 1 

pens in the social as well as in the physiological sphere. The 
abasement of the parents is entailed upon the children. This 
seems a very cruel thing in the constitution of human society; 
but the physiological laws and the social laws will not abate one 
jot or tittle of their claims, however apparently cruel, to spare 
the integrity of the moral law that each should suffer only for his 
own sins. 

There are two kinds of philanthropy : One is microscopic, 
and sees only the isolated cases of suffering, without perceiving 
their relation to causes ; the other is comprehensive, and gen- 
eralizes all forms of suffering in relation to their causes, and 
considers them with reference, not only to the special means of 
curing single cases, but to the general means of mitigation and 
prevention. The one is the impulse simply, the other is the 
impulse informed and directed by intellect. The measures of 
the impulse simply may be very different from the measures of a 
broader philanthropy, and the two are very often not well cal- 
culated to work together. The law of the one is often in con- 
flict with the law of the other. As we have seen (Chap. XII.), 
the entire system of morality is based on conflict between lower 
and higher sentiments. The one consults only selfish and 
immediate gratification ; the other takes a more comprehensive 
view, and considers what is due to others, accepts only what is 
compatible with general interests, and thus, with present loss, 
secures more in the end than could otherwise be had. On a 
like principle, it very often happens that in giving immediate 
relief to some kinds of deprivation, evil habits are fostered, and 
the suffering therefrom made greater. Some who have spent 
the greater part of their lives in conscientious endeavor to relieve 
suffering, have found at last that they have encouraged, and 
rather increased than reduced, the evils they deplored. A phil- 
anthropic lady said : " I have been spending my life in creating 
paupers ; and I am done." — (Savage, Morals of Evolution). 

If this view of the conflict of laws be correct, then Hooker's 
death-bed meditation on the perfect obedience of angels to law, 
assumes an impossible condition, so far as known to our 



362 CONFLICT OF NATURAL LAWS. [Chap. XXIX. 

experience. Still, if we must concede that the angels might in 
their sphere render such obedience, yet surely man could not in 
his, since obedience to one law is sometimes outright diso- 
bedience to another. 

The cases above given are only briefly-stated examples of the 
many like instances which find place in the manifold operations 
of that complex thing which we know as society. Some of these 
examples will be more fully stated in succeeding chapters, wherein 
the fact of the conflict of natural laws will receive additional 
confirmation. 



PART SIXTH. 

THE OUTLOOK, SOCIAL AND MORAL. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

SANITARY CONDITIONS. 

Section 196. — With the progress of science and agriculture 
there is improvement in some respects in sanitary conditions. 
By thorough drainage the mischief from malaria is greatly 
abated, if not entirely prevented, in some localities. In others 
it is modified, at least, by the same means. The drawback is 
that, with the disappearance of one form of disease, another usu- 
ally appears. In this way the ague of a new country, not by 
any means malignant, but affecting the system with a good 
deal of disturbance, gives way, as the country improves, to fevers 
of stubborn character, and singularly enough, to consumption 
as a prevailing disease. But while this is true of some localities, 
there are others in which it seems impossible to get rid of mala- 
ria. This is generally the case along streams. The channels 
may be open and the water flow freely, but fogs rise and extend 
far out on either side, floating disease to the people. The 
marshes which skirt large bodies of water impart the seeds of 



364 SANITARY CONDITIONS. [Chap. XXX. 

disease even more fatally ; and little progress has been made so 
far in getting rid of this source of atmospheric impurity. Some 
marshes and swamps may be drained, and others may be filled 
up; but it is difficult to make the work permanent. The silting 
up of river mouths and the elevation of river beds cause the 
overflow of banks, and change arable lands into pestilential 
swamps. The rising of a shore line may lift swampy regions 
into dry land, but other regions, equally the source of pestilence, 
may come to the surface. By the sinking of the shore an exist- 
ing marsh may go under the waves, but a new one is liable to be 
formed of land that was formerly dry; so that there appears to 
be no remedy for this source of disease so long as the land, as 
in all times past, keeps rising and sinking, except at an enormous 
cost of labor for filling up or dredging out; and such remedy 
may not, under all circumstances, be practicable, whatever the 
industrial strength of the people. There were marshes in Italy, 
near Rome, three thousand years ago; and there are still marshes 
there, sending their pestilential effluvia into the streets of the 
" Eternal City," and endangering the health of "God's vicege- 
rent on earth." That this should be the sanitary condition of what 
was once the great power which ruled the world, is not in keep- 
ing with prevalent optimistic prejudices; and the eucalyptus now 
planted to reduce the poison of this region may not have all the 
efficacy that is hoped for. While I write, the statement is made 
on competent authority, that the old historical island of Cyprus, 
recently acquired by England, is incurably unhealthy. Civiliza- 
tion must get rid of these sources of disease, still so common in 
all countries of the world, before it can hope for much from the 
pestilential regions of a country like that of Africa. There is 
not the least clue yet to the solution of this problem. Nothing 
yet points to the tropical regions of the earth as the fitting abode 
of finely cultured human beings in a high order of society. The 
climate is relaxing to both body and mind, favoring mainly the 
development of indolence, sensuality, and passion. There is no 
warrant for the dream of a highly organized, healthy, and hap- 



Sec. 197.1 THE DEATH RATE. 365 

py people covering all the face of the earth with life that is a 
continual jubilee. 

Section 197. — But whatever the drawbacks, the results show 
that improvement has been made in some respects in the sani- 
tary environment of civilized man. Plagues are not so apt to 
afflict particular peoples, and epidemics do not assume the viru- 
lence they once did. This is due in part to improved medical 
practice, in part to better nourishment, cleanlier habits, and 
better lighted and ventilated houses. These changes for the 
better are the result of greater intelligence and greater care for 
human well-being. Quite the same is true of famines. For- 
merly, they were frequent and terrible ; but now, owing mainly 
to the facilities of commerce, by which products are more 
quickly and widely distributed among peoples having commercial 
relations, destitution is less frequent and less fatal than formerly. 
Still it will not do to overlook the great famines of modern 
times, in regions accessible to the commerce of the world. Wit- 
ness the rapidity with which famines have followed one another 
in India, in the very face of the most triumphant of all civiliza- 
tions. In the midst of our greatest achievements we are com- 
pelled humbly to acknowledge what appears, all things consid- 
ered, to be irremediable failure. 

Under the appliances of civilization for the bettering of man's 
conditions, the death rate was, for many generations, gradually 
reduced — the average of longevity rising. Yet within the last 
half century a reverse tendency has set in, and the death rate 
is rising. With all our science, all our hygienic precaution, all 
our medical skill, the average of life appears to be less than it 
was two generations since. We need not go far to find the 
principal cause of this adverse tendency. It is in the increas- 
ing density of population under the stimulus of modern indus- 
tries and the building up of great cities. "Excluding the London 
districts, about which there is some difficulty, we have seven 
groups of districts where the mortality ranges thus: 17, 19, 22, 
25, 28, 32, and 39. In the same districts the numbers of per- 
sons to a square mile are: 166, 186, 379, 1,718, 4,499, I2 >357> 
17 



366 SANITARY CONDITIONS. \Chap. XXX, 

65,283." — (Brassey, Foreign Work and English Wages). Doctors 
Farr and Lankester, and others, by means of carefully collected 
statistics, have shown such an intimate relation between the rate 
of mortality and the density of population, that the one becomes 
a very accurate measure of the other. And this is a cause of 
human suffering not easy to remedy. While better homes for 
the poor may be provided, and greater general intelligence may 
care more effectually for the health of the people, it is scarcely 
possible to avoid even greater concentration of population in 
the future than that which now exists. Much, no doubt, may 
be done for the health of cities, but people cannot be prevented 
from flocking to them; and the puzzle of philanthropy to get 
rid of the accompanying evils, or even to palliate them, is likely 
to become even more perplexing than at present. 

Section 198. — But even the sanitary work done through all 
the appliances of medicine and hygiene, though on the whole a 
good, which we are glad to accept, is nevertheless alloyed with 
its inevitable taint of evil. There is a good and a not-good 
bound up together in the results of the skill which conserves the 
feeble. In the rough life of former times, the principle of phys- 
ical selection had fuller sway than at present, and through its 
action, only the physically vigorous were able to survive. This 
maintained the vigor of peoples, and even made those races as 
"hard and tough as steel," which now hold the front rank of 
civilization. Under the incoming system of things, the tendency 
appears to be to conserve the intellectually, rather than the 
physically, favored. Those may survive who know how to avoid 
the breakers, and not those merely who have strength to buffet 
them. But there is complication, even here, with the fact that 
those who are willing to avail themselves of the requisite sani- 
tary knowledge, are not always able to do as they wish, while 
many who know better will persist in following the vicious fash- 
ions which set such knowledge at defiance. Still, an effect of 
improved medicine and hygiene is to preserve the feeble. 
11 There is little doubt that the survival of the weak and help- 
less, and the sustentation of the unfit and the vicious, are begin- 



Sec ip&] CONSERVING THE WEAK. 367 

ning to poison the blood and paralyze the energy of the race." 
(Prof. J. LeConte, in Popular Science Monthly). " During the 
more primitive phazes of civilization, those of weak and defect- 
ive blood were more liable to be swept into an untimely grave 
than they are to-day. Now all such are skilfully nursed up to 
the fertile period, to the multiplication and perpetuation of their 
kind." — (Dr. J. R. Black, Popular Science Monthly). Following 
Greg, Wallace, and Galton, Darwin says: "With savages, the 
weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that sur- 
vive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized 
men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of 
elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and 
the sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert 
their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last 
moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has pre- 
served thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly 
have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civ- 
ilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended 
to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be 
highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon 
a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degenera- 
tion of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man him- 
self, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals 
to breed." — (Descent of Man L, 161-2). It is not a good thus 
to reduce the average physical vigor of civilized peoples. There 
is, then, an additional need in this direction, which is that the 
feeble thus preserved shall be made by similar means to leave 
successors who have greater physical stamina than themselves. 
The course of civilization as yet shows no sign of a general 
movement in this direction. It points rather to the decline, on 
the whole, of those who have the best opportunity thus to con- 
serve the feeble, and the taking of their places through the more 
rapid multiplication of the sturdy lower classes, where physical 
selection still has a considerable part to play. 

The immunity from labor, which the possession of wealth 
brings, is favoring the increase of an indolent class of people 



368 SANITARY CONDITIONS. \Chap. XXX. 

who grow weak in body, and, eventually, weak in mind. It 
threatens to bring upon us a train of evils which have always 
followed, sooner or later, in the wake of slavery. It is debauch- 
ing its victims mentally, morally, and physically. The extrava- 
gance of fashion in dress which wealth displays, is often directly 
unfavorable to health, while extravagance in this and all the other 
vanities of life becomes the envy of people with less means for 
gratification, and their life is a continual worry, depressing the 
mind, and exhausting the body, in a mad struggle for means to 
ape their superiors in the ranks of fashion. We have reformers, 
of course, who are laboring against these tendencies, but so far 
their efforts appear to have no favorable result, and an idle and 
fashion-nursing aristocracy on the one hand, and their slavish 
imitators on the other, with deterioration in both, are everywhere 
noticeable features of our progressive civilization. When we 
compare the physical frailty of women who can afford to live 
fine with the robustness of women in the lower classes who live 
plain and work in the field, there is little encouragement for the 
optimistic fancy that the means of conserving the feeble are also 
imparting vigor of constitution. Frances Power Cobbe (in 
Contemporary Review) observes: "One of the exasperating 
things about this evil of female valetudinarianism is, that the 
women who are its victims, are precisely the human beings who, 
of our whole mortal race, seem naturally most exempt from 
physical want or danger, and ought to have enjoyed immunity 
from disease or pain of any kind. Such ladies have probably 
never, from their birth, been exposed to hardship, or toil, or ill- 
ventilation, or bad or scanty food, fuel, or raiment. They have 
fed on the fatness of the earth, and been clothed in purple and 
fine linen." There is nothing effectually to counteract the 
deleterious effects of dress, fashion, and dissipation. There is 
reason to apprehend that increasing intelligence and opportunity 
are adding to the aggregate of physical debility, with little pros- 
pect of adequate compensation in kind, unless, indeed, this is to 
be found in the mere extension of an enfeebled existence. 



Sec. 1P9-] DEBILITATING INDUSTRIES. 369 

Section 199. — But while the hygiene of advanced civilization 
is impotent to invigorate the feeble whom it conserves, the very 
tenor and tendency of civilized life and industry are still further 
to enfeeble. While, in the early periods of human existence, 
hunting and war, pastoral life and agriculture, were full of hard- 
ship and exposure, which cut down the feeble, they were, never- 
theless, healthy, and promoted the vigor of the survivors. In 
modern life the hardship is only partially got rid of, while new 
forms of repulsive occupation have been added to the list of 
industries. Mining in the dark, damp caverns of the earth is 
an ever enlarging example of the kind. Still more than in Sen- 
aca's time do men dig mid "hideous caves, hollow and hanging 
rocks, horrid rivers, dead and perpetual darkness, and not with- 
out the apprehension of hell itself." Hell itself truly in a sense! 
An occupation like this may overcome the feeble, but there is 
little in it to impart robustness of constitution to survivors. The 
breathing of air heavy with carbonic acid poisons the blood; and 
without the invigorating influence of the direct rays of the sun, 
physical vigor could hardly, under, any circumstances, be main- 
tained from generation to generation. To this must be added 
a long list of occupations growing out of the use of machinery, 
which are vitiating both to body and mind. In the manufactur- 
ing districts of France and England there is falling off in stature 
as well as in constitutional vigor. The effect of machinery is to 
lighten labor, but, at the same time, to make it more unhealthy. 
The division of labor, so necessary a part of advanced industry, 
in confining the mind of the operative to but one thing, never 
diversifies his inventive resources, but habituates his industrial 
life and mental operations to monotony, and makes of the indi- 
vidual an automatic machine, without incentive or help to the 
symmetrical development of body and mind. Industrial monot- 
ony may, indeed, favor insanity, as has been alleged (Griesinger 
quoted by Royce); but, however this may be, it certainly does 
favor stupidity, and tends in the direction of dwarfed mentality 
and drivelling idiocy. Add to this the heated and close atmos- 
phere necessary in some occupations, and the dust and effluvia 



37° SANITARY CONDITIONS. [Chap. XXX. 

which cannot be avoided in others, and we readily perceive that 
civilization is not contributing in all directions to an equilibrium 
between man and his environment on the basis of a sound mind 
and a sound body. 

, Under the influence of education and the use of machinery, 
the tendency from occupations requiring both mental and muscu- 
lar exertion to those which become either physically automatic, 
without mental activity, or purely mental, without muscular activ- 
ity, is attended in the different classes with a complication of 
undesirable results. That form of the division of labor which is 
divorcing the two activities of mind and body, is doing injury in 
defiance of the increase of general intelligence and of special 
knowledge, to the integrality of the individual constitution. 
While the routine work of the mill allows the mind to become 
listless and inert, only a small part of the muscles are called into 
action, and the rest become dwarfed by disuse, the general 
health suffering for the want ot general activity and interest. 
And while the brain-labor which pertains to numerous branches 
of commercial and intellectual life, permits the muscles to 
become dwarfed, it at the same time worries and overtaxes the 
brain. The greater strain upon the nervous system is a prevail- 
ing feature of the tendency of occupation from a lower to a 
higher form of civilization; and with it the types of disease are 
undergoing change. Cerebral and nervous diseases are on the 
increase. Among civilized peoples there is more sensibility, 
more suppressed emotion, more mental suffering, more hysteria, 
more hypochondria, more insanity, more self-destruction. 

Insanity is not known among primitive people; it is a disease 
of civilization, and is one of the most fearful, and, so far from 
any abatement under the progress of science, the percentage of 
insanity might be used as a gauge of civilization, the one increas- 
ing with the other. Notwithstanding the progress of medical 
science, it fails to overtake disease of the human brain. " We 
seem to do less for the chronic insane now than fifty years ago, 
and diseases of the mind seem more and more relapsable; hid- 
den, treacherous, recurring forms of disease are springing up 



Sec. ipp.] suicide. 371 

everwyhere, to the confounding both of science and law." — (Dr. 
George M. Beard, N. A. Review, Sep., 1880.) 

Suicide is also becoming more common. Professor Morselli, 
of Milan, who has studied this subject more profoundly, per- 
haps, than any living man, presents statistics showing that for 
the current century the increase of suicides in Europe has been 
greater than the increase of population. It prevails most in the 
most civilized countries, and is usually most prevalent in cities, 
the centers of civilization; but it is extending over the country 
like a contagion. Paris, long regarded as the center of refined 
civilization, suffers most from the suicidal propensity, and its 
neighborhood partakes of its own bad eminence. Wherever 
education is carried highest, there is the most self-destruction, 
so that the number and efficiency of the great schools and the 
abundance of periodical literature, correspond with the preva- 
lence of suicide. Prussia in general, and Saxony in particular, 
are eminent in this respect among the countries of Europe; and 
everywhere the educated classes suffer more than the rude and 
uncultured. It is painful to be compelled to face the sad show- 
ing that culture and suicide are correlative facts in the progress 
of civilization. It was so in ancient Greece and Rome. Suicide 
was most prevalent when these civilizations were at their best. 
The inequality of classes, the struggle to rise, the failures, the 
pressure of want or some deprivation of what is dearly coveted, 
together with undue sensitiveness, all lead to despair, to the 
unbalancing of the mind, to self-destruction. Even the terrors 
of the prevailing dogmas in the church appear to exercise no 
more restraint over the suicidal propensity in the Christian world, 
than did the license of the pagan creed in the old Greek and 
Roman worlds. A religious authority refers the annual thou- 
sands of suicides in Europe to the general decline of faith. If 
this were so, the Jewish faith would be more desirable than the 
Catholic, and the Catholic more desirable than the Protestant, 
for Jews commit suicide less than Catholics, and Catholics less 
than Protestants. Rather is the growth of suicide due to the 



372 SANITARY CONDITIONS. [Chap. XXX. 

instability of social conditions, the opportunity for change, and 
the intense competition in the struggles of life. 

The more complicated a machine is the more liable is it to 
get out of order; the same is true of mind; and the human 
mind has become more complicated in structure and sensitive 
in action under the educational influences of modern civiliza- 
tion. It is the result of multiplied activity in all the spheres of 
life; and then the continued intensification of this same activity 
often proves to be too heavy a tax, and the mind succumbs in 
mania or suicide, or both. The evils grow out of the intense 
and diversified struggle between competitors in all the functions 
of industrial, social, and political life. Then what is the 
remedy ? Nothing short of the removal of the cause. There 
may be some palliation, but no radical cure except by the still- 
ing of these activities; but this would defeat the glorious ends 
of civilization; hence, while these activities continue, there will 
be struggle, exhaustion, and defeat, and the path of our tri- 
umphant progress will "be inundated with the tears and blood 
of mankind." 

Nothing, perhaps, so luridly pictures the dark side of civilization 
as this increasing army of self-destroyers. It is not simply the 
fact that thousands every year make away with themselves that 
alone counts. This is only the index to misery truly beyond 
the reach of estimate. The suicide must feel that life embodies 
for him more of pain than of happiness, and that the overbalance 
on the side of misery is large enough to warrant the painful 
undertaking of self-destruction. And then, for every one that 
reaches this crisis how many must there be, who, in moments of 
despair and outrage, think of suicide as an alternative which 
might tell for happiness by closing up once for all the fountains 
of pain, — and yet of which gloomy deliberations, for stopping 
short of the fatal act, the world never hears? But, does this 
condemn civilization? By no means. The hights are forever 
equal to the depths. Even when so many sink to the very 
depths of sorrow, a still larger proportion may rise to corre- 
sponding elevation of enjoyment. The anguish of the defeated 



Sec. 200.] HUMAN SACRIFICE THE PRICE OF PLENTY. 373 

in life may be more than compensated by the joyfulness of the 
victors. It is the richness of the opportunity that develops the 
extremes. It is the peculiar province of civilization to lengthen 
out the emotional scale; and we may be sure that the readings 
of this scale can not fall further below the zero of happiness 
than they rise above it. The point we make is that, if they 
rise higher above this zero, they must fall farther below. 

Section 200.- — If it were only the fathers who suffer from the 
general causes of weakness and degradation, there would be less 
to deplore, but the mothers are becoming deeply involved. And 
this is so, not only in the manufacturing districts where girls 
form a large part of the operatives, but it is only too prevalent in 
agricultural districts ; and the mothers in most classes of society 
have become thus entangled in the meshes of a deterioration 
which threatens to become constitutional and hereditary. Gal- 
ton observes that, "Our race is overweighted, and likely to be 
drudged into degeneracy, by demands that exceed its powers." 
It is bad enough now, as we might give page after page of 
testimony to prove, but with greater intelligence and opportunity 
as the stimulus of greater competition under greater industrial 
pressure, it is likely to become still worse with the progress of 
civilization. The idle on the one hand, indulging in vicious 
fashions and the dissipation of high life, and the overworked on 
the other, afford little ground, indeed, for great expectations of 
the future. 

Sufficient has been stated to indicate that, so far as health of 
mind and body is concerned, while civilized peoples are gaining 
on one side, they are losing on the other. But these unhealthy 
and exhausting occupations bring us more of civilized plenty, so 
much our boast; and they are likely to be increased rather than 
diminished. If we get more in the aggregate at the cost of life, 
life itself must be given up. From the healthy hills of the 
country come annually hecatombs to be sacrificed on the altars 
of civilization. This is costly ; but still we pay the price. As 
the blessings of the gods were once to be had only by lavish 



374 PROSPECTS OF THE COMMON PEOPLE. \Chap. XXXI. 

sacrifices on their altars, so, now, are the boasted blessings of 
civilization to be secured only by the sacrifice of human beings 
on the altars of industry and plenty. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

PROSPECTS OF THE COMMON, WORKING PEOPLE. 

Section 201. — While machinery greatly increases the quan- 
tity of production, it fails to reduce the amount of labor. The 
limits of the demand appear to be determined for the most part 
by the extent of the supply. A greater abundance of products 
from the same amount of labor means more generous living for 
a larger proportion of the people, usually with reduction of the 
death-rate among the laboring classes, and consequent encour- 
agement to their rapid increase of numbers. And if population 
should not in every instance keep pace with production, the in- 
crease and diversification of human wants will. In all the 
changes which civilization has effected, there has been so far no 
general and permanent relaxation in the demand for products, 
and the laborer is driven as remorselessly as he ever was. The 
continued complication of industries starts new occupations into 
existence, some of which are not only unhealthy, but repulsive. 
But even if there were no additions to the repugnant character 
of labor in general, the fact of ineradicable repugnance in certain 
industries, is a difficult one to deal with in Utopian speculations. 
The difficulty still holds, whether the "hewers of wood and 
drawers of water" shall always be a class, or whether it shall be- 
come the duty of all to take part in such necessary labor as is 
intrinsically repulsive. This alternative is so little probable that 
it may be dismissed without further consideration. Whatever 



Sec. 20I.] EDUCATION AND DISCONTENT. 375 

the form of human society on earth, it is not likely that every 
one will be called on to take a hand in the most repulsive of 
necessary industries. In what form, then, is relief to come to 
that great class of our fellows who do the hard and disagreeable 
labor of life? "Pay them better in the first place." 

Very well; admit the feasibility of this, and that society will 
see justice done to the poor worker. Let us double his wages. 
As it is now, we will admit, he can get but a bare subsistence, 
not the best food, or the best clothing, with only a small jug of 
whiskey on pay days and holidays — such jug being the symbol 
of dissipation. With twice as much to do with he may live bet- 
ter and go better clothed: so far good; but he will be more like- 
ly to indulge in idle days, days of dissipation; that is, he will 
have a bigger jug for whiskey. "But, you talk nonsense; edu- 
cate him, educate him above such dissipation and selfishness." 

Very well, let him be educated. We hope it may be his good 
fortune to be educated above the follies now so common in his 
class. If this were possible would it be an unalloyed good ? 
Just as soon as we educate these workers of civilization, we 
make them more dissatisfied ihan ever with their condition, 
even with all the ameliorations of which that condition is sus- 
ceptible. You cannot educate and refine the worker without 
making him feel more exquisitely the repulsiveness of his coarse 
and uncouth occupation. Even if civilization does nothing to 
make certain labors per se more repulsive, it makes them rela- 
tively so by refining the tastes of the laborer. The good can- 
not be had without the evil. The working people of the world 
have appeared to be in the happiest frame of mind, when they 
had good health and steady occupation as the condition of a 
fair supply of the necessaries of life, and little or no surplus to 
stimulate dissipation. The need of working steadily for ends 
which are directly perceived and warmly appreciated, without 
the thoughts of an alternative that would be easier, establishes 
individual habit and the common sentiment of a class, with per- 
haps the greatest possible contentment in life. These people can 
only better their condition through the power which education may 



376 PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE. \Chap. XXXI. 

give; but with education come new wants, and with new wants, a 
discontent which was unknown before. This fact was clearly per- 
ceived by that audacious writer, Mandeville, and stated in his blunt 
way as follows: "To make the society and people easy under the 
meanest circumstances, it is requisite that great numbers of them 
should be ignorant as well as poor. Knowledge both enlarges 
and multiplies our desires, and the fewer things a man wishes 
for, the more easily his necessities may be supplied. The wel- 
fare and felicity, therefore, of every State and kingdom, require 
that the knowledge of the working poor should be confined 
within the verge of their occupations, and never extended (as to 
things visible) beyond what relates to their calling. The more 
a shepherd, a ploughman, or any other peasant, knows of the 
world, and the things that are foreign to his labor or employment, 
the less fit he will be to go through the fatigues and hardships of 
it with cheerfulness and content." — (Fable of the Bees, 179). 
It does not follow from this view that it is not best to educate 
the worker as far as possible ; but it does follow that we cannot 
bring him knowledge without bringing him pain. Contentment 
may not, indeed, be the greatest of blessings. It is a paradox 
in favor with agitators that contentment may be the basis on 
which misery rests. Lassalle found the working classes in gen- 
eral so insensible to their indigence, that he said the first thing to 
be done was to teach them their misery (Rae). 

- Section 202. — Laborers are, of course, not all alike in respect 
to saving wages. There is a great difference, for example, in 
this country between Celts and Teutons in their mode of apply- 
ing economic principles to practical life; and American employes 
have been, and for a good reason continue to be, largely Celtic. 
Much the same may be said of the African element in our pop- 
ulation; while the laborer with more Teuton blood in his veins, 
whether from Germany, Scotland, or the north of Ireland, is 
more given to save his earnings, and as soon as he can to 
become his own employer, and by and by the employer of 
others. Very promptly and steadily the Germans and Scotch- 
Irish take their place in the ranks of the much abused "oppres- 



SeC. 202. \ THRIFT AS A PERSONAL QUALITY. 377 

sors of labor." It is rarely so with the purer Celt, who begins 
a laborer and ends a laborer, and transmits the habit to his 
children. 

It makes all the difference in the world whether people save 
or not. Neither are employers or laborers a fixed caste. They 
often exchange places, employers becoming laborers, and labor- 
ers becoming employers. By what process does this take place ? 
The laborer ' who saves may become an employer, and the 
employer who spends more than he gets may become a laborer. 
And whether a man shall be one or the other depends largely 
on his industry, his prudence, his saving, his careful investment. 
The strong push their way upward, the weak are crowded down- 
ward; and there may be faults in the system under which this 
takes place, but with freedom of opportunity and fair competi- 
tion, there will be inequality of condition ; such is the difference 
in people. This appears to be the result of conditions which 
cannot be set aside. 

Economists tell us that the liberal reward of labor encourages 
and stimulates thrift. That depends altogether on who the 
laborer is. A surplus of earnings stimulates extravagance and 
dissipation as well. This was very noticeable in the "good 
times" after our great war. The readiness with which laborers 
found employment at high wages afforded a great opportunity 
for them to get a good start in the world, but only a small per- 
centage of them improved it. Instead of thrift, fast living 
became the fashion of all classes; and if the means were not at 
command to-day, to-morrow was confidently drawn upon, for 
the gratification must be had, and self-denial was rapidly passing 
out of the category of virtues. Only the discipline of "hard 
times" with its limitations, could arrest this reckless spendthrift 
tendency. 

In i860 Irish laborers in American mines received &7}4 cents 
a day; in 1872, $2; 1873, $ 2 - 2 5; y et "it was believed that the 
men saved more when paid at the rate of 87*^ cents a day than 
they did when the great rise in their wages had taken place." — 
(Brassey). The like held true in England. Mundella, quoted 



378 PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE. [Chap. XXXI. 

by Brassey, says: "While expressing my belief that much that 
has been said has been unnecessarily severe, and, in some 
instances, grossly unjust, it is impossible to deny that the high 
wages earned in the coal and iron trades, during the late period 
of inflation, have added little to the material or moral well- 
being of many of the workers in these branches of industry." 
And Greg observes : " Nor are the artisans and operatives to 
be condemned because in such a time of glowing sunshine they 
insisted on sharing in the warmth, and forced up their wages to 
perhaps an extravagant degree. Where both parties were alike, 
if not equally, to blame was, not that they made hay while the 
sun was shining, but that the hay, instead of being laid up for 
winter seasons, was consumed as fast as it was harvested." — 
(Nineteenth Century, May, 1879). Florence Nightingale, too, 
affirms : " I could point to a town in England where men can 
earn wages of ten shillings a day, and drink it all away. Aye, 
and the women, too. A woman said, ' I think no more of my 
money than of a flea in a churchyard.' They are not a penny 
the better for it, either in clothes, lodging, bedding, or any of 
the decencies, comforts, or true interests of life." — (Nineteenth 
Century). 

Higher wages alone will not lift the laborer up ; nor will 
reduced hours, nor both together. The leisure secured by 
reduced labor-time may be misused precisely as the surplus of 
earnings is misused. The one may be expended on the vani- 
ties of life for low forms of gratification ; the other may be mis- 
used just so, and generally is so misused whenever the laborer 
has been blessed with such leisure. The wise will use such 
advantages for the promotion of their well-being; the unwise 
will misuse them for the aggravation of their ill-being. Indi- 
vidual character will tell, whatever the conditions of life. The 
very conditions of short hours and surplus earnings but help 
more rapidly to divide the two great classes of working people, — 
those who help themselves upward, and those who stay where 
they are or drift still lower. So far from education proving to 
be a remedy here, it appears to be the reverse. The educated 



Sec. 20J.] DRIFTING INTO FINE OCCUPATIONS. 379 

city clerk has not necessarily learned to economize, and usually 
the higher his salary the more he spends. Liberal pay does 
not of itself encourage saving, either with or without education. 
It but serves, as among the lower orders of workers, to divide 
them into the two classes, one of which saves, while the other 
lives up all from day to day. This view of the facts does not 
favor long hours and low wages by any means ; it only shows 
that short hours and high wages are not sufficient to help those 
who will not help themselves, and something else is required to 
save the improvident, both educated and uneducated, from their 
own follies. 

Section 203. — While education, so generally looked to as 
the savior of the civilized world, may do good in the long 
run, it is liable at the same time to bring evils in its train, for 
which it is not easy in turn to find a remedy. The general 
drifting of population toward cities and towns already crowded, 
is not wholly due to the springing up of commerce and the 
mechanical industries. No sooner does the son of a farmer or 
mechanic get a little education beyond the simplest branches, 
than he thirsts for some occupation requiring less physical labor 
than he has been accustomed to. If he can only get a clerk- 
ship in village or city, he is happy. He now enjoys the com- 
fort of that fine aristocratic feeling to be found only among 
people who do not work for a living. This is, of course, a 
vicious state of things, but how is it to be helped ? If you 
educate the farmer's son, the carpenter's son, the miner's son, 
the scavenger's son, the operative's son, you must not expect 
them to stand the sun and the storm, the dingy cavern, the filth 
of the street, the dust of the mill, and the heat of the furnace, 
with the complacency of their parents and without an effort to 
escape. One of the evident results of current education is to 
throng the occupations which require little muscular and more 
mental labor with subjects who are too generally destitute of 
the qualifications necessary to success. The disappointment 
which springs from this excessive competition affords the incen- 
tive and opens the way to the finer sorts of crime against prop- 



380 PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE. [Chap. XXXI. 

erty. Thus, if education should go to the diminution of the 
more violent forms of crime in the "lower walks " of life, its 
tendency is toward the increase of "gentlemen's crimes" in the 
higher walks of life. The impotency of our much vaunted edu- 
cation to fit youths for success and happiness in the necessary 
avocations of life, is coming to be acknowledged more and more. 
The schools deliver their wards to society malcultured for the 
duties which await them. This drifting through the halls of 
education from the manly industries to fancy occupations, which 
are hardly industries at all, is a symptom of this wrong tendency, 
so palpable that none can fail to see. 

Attention has been frequently called to the deleterious influ- 
ence of our book education in unfitting youth for the sterner 
duties of life. It is not in this country only that it obtains ; it 
is wherever the system of education is in vogue. We quote 
from an English writer, Professor Sylvanus P. Thompson : 
" And ought we then to be surprised if, in pursuance of the sys- 
tem we have deliberately marked out for the rising generation, 
we keep our future artisans, till they are fifteen or sixteen, 
employed in no other work than sitting at a desk to follow, pen 
in hand, the literary course of studies of our educational code, 
we discover that on arriving at that age they have lost the taste 
for manual work, and prefer to starve on a threadbare pittance, 
as clerks or book-keepers, rather than by the less exacting and 
more remunerative labor of their hands. At the present 
moment, this tendency to despise a life of honorable manual 
toil, in straining after a supposed gentility, would be truly pitia- 
ble, if the proportions it has attained did not awaken more 
serious apprehension." Of the children who leave the elemen- 
tary schools of Paris, M. Salacis (quoted by Thompson) says : 
" These little bureaucrats, boys and girls, outlaws from real labor 
by no fault of their own, come naturally to the end of their 
school course with one fear before them — that of being forced 
to become workmen and workwomen ; but with one wash also, 
the boys to become clerks, the girls shopwomen." 

Sincere efforts are not wanting to counteract this tendency, 



Sec. 20J .] RACE-EDUCATION. 38 1 

but they appear to have little result. This apparently irrational 
drift of a gregarious feeling, which sets the fashion of escaping 
industry and the severer virtues with the progress of culture, has 
a cause for being so deep in human nature, that it seems to be 
quite beyond the reach of any corrective. But education we 
must have, and some kinds of education are better than others. 
We have plenty of educational doctors, with nostrums which are 
reputed to be infallible. Take, for example, the author of Race 
Education. He is an earnest writer and means well in every 
line of his book. More than that, his views of education are 
doubtless a great improvement on the usual methods. But 
while his educational regimen might prove fruitful of good 
results, it would fail utterly to accomplish all that he expects of 
it. At best it could only palliate. His potencies are imagina- 
tive and could not be brought down to the real. We can no 
more induce water to run up hill of its own accord in the moral, 
than in the physical, world. To accomplish any end there 
must be an efficient motive, and this cannot be supplied by 
theoretical means, but must come from out the actual attributes 
of human nature as it is. This adequate motive is the ful- 
crum of the Archimedean lever, and without it, it is not possible 
to move the world. 

Let us illustrate: Mr. Royce's 'scheme of race education is 
to be made efficacious mainly by home influences; but how are 
these to be given the proper character and direction ? It is the 
rule that as soon as a mother discovers that the family is well-to- 
do, she inculcates into her children's minds, by the subtlest 
of means, the prejudice that real industry is not high-toned, and 
they very soon learn to look down on labor. Others, not so well 
off, must needs follow this example in high life, and their chil- 
dren, too, must dawdle in order to be thoroughly respectable. 
The highest aim in life is that of conformity and display. Thus 
is established the spirit of a coterie, set, or caste, than which 
there is nothing mightier in society to coerce the lives of its 
members. The "higher" the education and the greater the 
civilization, the more vanity dominates; it dominates in the most 



382 PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE. [Chap. XXXI. 

secret recesses of society, in the homes of the people and in the 
public places, in all the forces which mold the young spirit in all 
fields of youthful culture whence spring many of the bitter fruits 
of life. This home education cannot rise higher than its source; 
and as the brain of civilized woman appears to be growing 
smaller under some physiological necessity, rather than larger, as 
civilization advances (section 216), are we not met on the 
threshold of "race education" with impotencies which threaten 
forever to prevent its actualization? This is no groundless 
apprehension; every civilization of the world, so far, has con- 
firmed it. 

A picture of the women of society might be given from 
Ouida, but we forbear. It is no doubt overdrawn, and Ouida 
is reputed by some to be a "diseased author/' But at any rate 
the picture lies in the direction of the tendencies of high life, 
and it is likely to become in the future even nearer the truth 
than at present. It might be a source of consolation to reflect 
that the jaded creatures of fashionable life do not make up the 
great body of women in the civilized world, if it were not that 
the absolute, if not the relative, number of this class is on the 
increase. The forces which are operating to this end are becom- 
ing constantly stronger and more wide spread with the extension 
of wealth and the leisure and display it supports. A lady 
witness may be quoted as follows: "In view of our yearly 
increasing wealth, and the perpetual additions which are thereby 
made to the idle and luxurious classes, every counter-check to 
corrupting frivolity is to be hailed as an element of salvation. 
It is this large amount of female energy run wild, disfranchized 
of the little active cares which formerly employed it, and having 
found no substitute for them but the daily round in the tread- 
mill of pleasure, that is spreading a pernicious example at home, 
and lowering the character of our countrywomen abroad." — 
(Emily Pfeiffer, Contemporary Review, February, 1881). The 
pictures given by Tacitus and Suetonius of society in high life 
among the Romans, in the earlier days of the empire, when 
Rome was in the zenith of her power, ought to have great sug- 



Sec, 20J.] DEGENERACY OF HIGH LIFE. 383 

gestive value for us. No doubt the social degeneracy of our 
times is more covert and more polished — it is not so violently 
bad, but it is similar. It is a disease of civilization taking its 
modifications of type mainly from the idiosyncracies of patients. 
People cannot have over-plenty for a long time without running 
into those follies which eventually damn, and damn effectually. 
Evil will attend the coveted and secured good; and no system 
of morality or religion can prevent it. It does not matter how 
voluntarily the disease may seem to be brought on; it is none 
the less a fatality, coming by impulse and ending in ruin. 

In view of the tendency of all high civilizations to develop 
social degeneracy in the leading classes, what is to be expected 
of home education directed by the mothers belonging to those 
classes ? And this we must remember, that, even if these classes 
are comparatively small in numbers, they are yet weighty in 
influence, and are replenished continually from the ranks below, 
and kept more than full from this source. More than this, they 
are, the fashion-lights set to be seen of all women. They get 
into the newspapers, reporters doing them in their garish best. 
The silk rustles, the gold glitters, the diamonds sparkle. The 
wearers become the envy of almost all their sex, in the ranks 
of the common, poorer, and better people; and if these had 
but one choice of a destiny to make in the world, they would 
choose to be like them. This is shown every day and almost 
everywhere, by the straining to ape the ways of people in "high 
social position." This is where the danger most lurks, and it is 
this, more than anything else, that shows the amiable folly of 
looking to home influences for the higher education that is to 
exalt above the follies of life, and secure justice to those by 
whose labor the world subsists. The women who are really 
exemplary as women and mothers are comparatively so few, and 
their position in life so humble and obscure by the very necessity 
of their exalted character, that society does not look up to them, 
but rather affects to look down upon them. "Society" only 
"looks up" under the stimulus of the vanities, and this is fatal 
to the prevalence in society of a nobler type of womanhood as 



384 PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE [Chap. XXXI. 

the fountain of education; and there appears to be no remedy 
for this but through a revolution in human nature, for which 
there is no provision within the bounds of the possible. 

The Greeks and Romans had education; but it is a plain fact 
of history that the educated sank deepest into the sloughs of 
social degeneracy. "But they had slavery." Certainly, and 
we have its equivalent — profits to the few from the labor of the 
many. Slavery pampered a class that could afford to be idle, 
and become degenerate; we have classes — leading classes, as of 
old — who can afford to do precisely the same thing, and they 
are doing it. But there is, of course, another side to this; our 
own civilization rests on its wealth, and it was the independence 
of the few, secured by the slavery of the many, that enabled the 
Greeks to build up the most brilliant civilization of antiquity. 
But it is neither the slavery that did, nor the thrift of freedom 
that is doing, the mischief, but the misuse that is made of the 
independence and leisure thus secured. What lies at the basis 
of culture and refinement, lies equally at the basis of luxury and 
degradation; and the opposing couples are locked together in the 
decline of every civilization. It does not matter whether the 
means for idleness and degeneracy come from the direct or 
indirect appropriation of the wealth created by human hands; 
as long as we indulge in the idleness and vanity, the luxurious 
living and pleasure-seeking of the "best society" of civilization, 
we shall go the road which others have gone, and no device of 
education will save us. 

Nevertheless are great changes in education now pending ; 
changes, however, which must be gradual, but which are at the 
same time inevitable. Let us hope that they will bring some 
improvement. It is the logical result o,f scientific methods to 
bring education up to the solid basis of the actual and the prac- 
tical. For a part, at least, of mankind, it must recognize all truth 
and not merely a part of it; when it will be its aim to show 
things as they really are, and not as some interested party may 
wish them to be. It should tear the mask off the pretenses, set 
aside the obsolete, and adapt the teaching of the day to the 



Sec. 204.] IMPROVEMENT FOSTERS DISCONTENT. 385 

exigency of the times. Not the least of its merits should be 
the recognition of the fact that there are some things which 
education itself cannot do. It cannot accomplish a result with- 
out the means of accomplishing it. The teacher cannot impart 
to his pupil anything more than or different from what is in 
himself. Consequently, it is not possible to revolutionize human 
nature by any form of voluntary education. No effectual sys- 
tem of education can transcend the limitations of human nature 
as bound up inevitably with the order of nature at large; it can 
only adapt itself thereto. It cannot lift its wards above the 
fatalities of existence, but can only strengthen them by clearness 
of insight, discipline of faculty, and singleness of purpose to 
find the most of good amid the conflicts of the inevitable. 

Section 204. — We cannot deal with the problem of elevat- 
ing the great working classes without perceiving, in connection 
with human progress, the emergence of a principle which does 
not tell directly for harmony and happiness. It has often been 
repeated that discontent is a necessary condition of progress and 
development. Discontent will not down. The very means we 
use to allay it only opens new fields for its activity. An attempt 
to satisfy the "thirst for knowledge " only increases its uneasi- 
ness and intensity. The ameliorations of any situation in life 
bring some comfort, but at the same time may occasion greater 
discontent than ever. This is aptly shown by De Tocqueville's 
researches into the causes of the French revolution. The 
author believes that France had never been so prosperous as for 
the twenty years immediately preceding the revolution, and that 
restlessness and discontent sprung up under the stimulus of pros- 
perity. As administrative abuses were gradually removed, the 
people became more dissatisfied with their situation. " So it 
would appear that the French found their condition the more 
insupportable in proportion to its improvement." And in gen- 
eral, " Evils which are patiently endured when they seem inev- 
itable, become intolerable when once the idea of escape from 
them is suggested. The very redress of grievances throws new 
light on those which are left untouched, and adds fresh poig- 



386 PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE. \Chcip. XXXI. 

nancy to their smart : if the pain be less, the patients' sensibility 
is greater." — (The Old Regime and the Revolution, Chap. 
XVL). The greater the number of our acquisitions, the more 
manifold become the sources of discontent. The historian 
Lecky observes : " The eager and restless ambitions which 
political liberty, intellectual activity, and manufacturing enter- 
prise, all in their different ways, conspire to foster, while they 
are the very principles and conditions of the progress of our 
age, render the virtue of content in all its forms extremely rare, 
and are peculiarly unpropitious to the formation of that spirit of 
humble and submissive resignation which alone can mitigate the 
agony of hopeless suffering. " — (Hist. Morals, IL, 65). With us 
all in a general way, it is not a question whether we shall be 
satisfied and stand still, or feel dissatisfied and advance ; discon- 
tent we shall feel, and advance we must. The question more 
particularly throughout this inquiry concerns the preponderance 
of gain in good, all things considered, in our progress from the 
lower to the higher stages of civilization. 

Two hundred years ago laboring people were not so well off 
as at present, but they were far more content with their situation 
in life. It is a peculiarity in human nature "that men can 
become accustomed to servitude beyond even the wish for 
change." — (Bain). People become most dissatisfied where freest 
with the largest opportunity. Some will rise out of others' reach, 
and the display of their means and habits of life are a source of 
irritation and discontent to those who have been less fortunate. 
In old times with less freedom, an impassable gulf separated 
the poor from the rich, and the former were usually content with 
their lot. What they lacked in goods they made up in stolid 
indifference or in religion and hope. While this resource of 
comfort is waning, the inability to reach what appears to be 
only a little way beyond their grasp, is endangering the happi- 
ness of a great many. Fashion and the selfish display of wealth 
aggravate this evil. And this bad example extends its influence 
down the social scale into the middle and even the lower classes, 
as it never did before in the history of the world. It does so 



SeC. 204.] EMULATION IN THE VANITIES. 387 

because of the cheaper, more rapid, and widespread diffusion of 
news, and the greater freedom and opportunity which is now 
guaranteed to most. People in the middle walks of life are 
driven to desperation by the mad struggle thus engendered. 
Not always the poorest people commit depredations on property, 
take to drunkenness, or end a disappointed career, may be, with 
suicide. This struggle under the lash of the vanities is a feature 
of psychological degeneracy in modern life which is worse than 
peculation and malfeasance in office, worse than alcoholic drunk- 
enness, because it lies at the basis of these evils, and is largely 
the soil in which they strike root and grow. As a cardinal 
psychologic force, it is by its own inherent demerit doing more 
than any one thing to debase the tone of modern character, 
and especially is it doing this in America. It fairly burns and 
shrivels up the nerves and very souls of millions who are engaged 
in the mad struggle for wealth to assume such position in society 
as this vanity craves. Mr. Royce, who indulges the optimistic 
dream that women will one day be the educators and saviors of 
the race, yet admits that "To-day, show, pride, and vanity make 
them its destroyers, leading on men by their extravagance to 
corruption in private as well as public business, until confidence 
in men and institutions is to-day fairly gone, and the downfall 
of the nation almost inevitable." — (Race Education, 113). 

What, then, is the remedy? There is none. Were you ever 
so eager to work, there is no assured resting place for your lever. 
The eager emulations of vanity burrow in every direction, and 
there is no solid ground. There might be an efficient remedy, 
if — but the base gives way, and the difficulty involved in the 
"if" is apparently absolute and insurmountable. If all mankind 
could become scientific and rational, this formidable "if" would 
be readily flanked, but the mass of mankind are predominantly 
emotional, and are quite likely forever to remain so. Erasmus 
was not greatly wrong in his reflection when they handed him 
Becket's holy handkerchief to kiss. The wiser wits may jeer, 
moralists may scold, and scientists may teach, but the human 
nature of a million years cannot be changed in its cardinal 



388 PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE. \Chap. XXXI. 

elements at this late day. If all were rational in the conduct of 
life, the principal causes of corruption and decline might be 
greatly or wholly avoided; but vanity as a motive of conduct is 
far stronger than reason; and after a certain stage in society is 
reached, vanity it is mainly that pilots the way to ruin, both indi- 
vidual and national. I cannot believe with Larned that the 
frivolities of vanity can be put out of countenance by setting up 
rationality against them. This has been often tried and always 
found wanting. There may be palliatives for this great disease 
of civilization, but no radical cure. 

It is fatal to a favorable prognosis of the case that the greatest 
votaries at the shrine of fashion are the most influential in the 
land. Those who rebel against the tyranny of fashion and vain 
display are jeered out of countenance by the officious people 
who mold public opinion. The evil is worst in the very centers 
of civilization, which boast of the greatest wealth and culture; 
there is least of it in primitive places. It is actually a develop- 
ment subject to the laws of evolution. The Methodist church 
for a long time in this country stood out against the vanity of 
display in dress and equipage, but it has been swept into the gay 
current along with most others. It had to consult the con- 
ditions of its own preservation in order to continue the 
instrument of grace to the unregenerate for their salvation. 
Clergymen generally do not dare to attack the vanities with any 
well-tempered weapon. It would be out of place and an offense 
against good manners to do so. For obvious reasons it would 
endanger their popularity and their places. They may preach 
to the people, but they must not preach "at" them. The vanities 
have a conventional sacredness which places them beyond the 
reach of reason and religion, and they are not slow to assert 
their supremacy. The " sword of the spirit " as wielded by 
modern hands is powerless against them. Church societies 
have in most places become the leaders and exemplars of 
fashion, and the churches so far head-centers of costly display, 
that the poor cannot afford to attend them. What they 
have lost in religion they have gained in folly. In former times 



SeC. 204.] OMNIPOTENCE OF THE VANITIES. 389 

the church administered to the peace and contentment of the 
laboring people, but the time when it would discharge the office 
of comforter to the lowly seems to have passed forever by, — so 
far at any rate, as the main body of the Protestant church is con- 
cerned, — and it now whisks before them with its tinsel of vanities 
and inflames their discontent. 

We are often assured that Christianity will purify our civiliza- 
tion and make it more lasting than those of the past. Indeed! 
Christians for the most part overran the Roman empire, and 
reduced it to comparative barbarism. Authoritative Christianity 
took possession of the empire before its course was run, but it 
had no power to stay the final catastrophe — it hastened it. Mod- 
ern civilization has sprung up under the teachings of professed 
Christianity, and it is becoming degenerate like the old. Verily, 
the agencies of evil which spring up under civilization and need 
most to be counteracted and subordinated, become the very 
masters. Somehow or other they get the upper hand, reduce 
the moral and religious forces to subordinate places, and direct 
the course of events as the very executors of destiny. It is but 
natural for clergymen, being especially in charge, to urge the 
importance of religion to the individual and to nations as well, 
and they should do so; but when, in order to retain their 
hold on the people and on society, they surrender to the irre- 
ligious vanities of life, they lose their grip on the very religion 
that is so much needed, and do absolutely nothing to arrest the 
downward tendency. 

If education but stimulates the discontent of the working 
classes, and if the ministrations of religion are losing their power 
to comfort the lowly, where are we to look for relief? There is 
no relief. By the very improvement of the laborer's condition 
of life, the extension of his freedom, the promotion of his culture, 
the enlargement of his opportunites, and the tantalizing display 
of the vanities, together with the weakening of religious conso- 
lations, is the lot of the laboring poor ever harder to bear. 
Harder to bear, fraught with more discontent, and still it is 
better than ever before, — such is the paradox. But we have a 
18 



39° PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE. \Ckdp. XXXI. 

logical right to this consoling reflection, that discontent which 
comes with improvement of condition and the spread of intelli- 
gence is not so deplorable a thing as, without reflection, we 
might assume it to be. Discontent and unhappiness are by no 
means synonymous. There is a sort of pleasure bound up with 
discontent, as there is pleasure bound up with the uncertainty of 
entering upon a doubtful conflict or the dread of playing one's 
part in battle. Of choice we go into the doubtful conflicts and 
into the battles. Restlessness and discontent by virtue of some 
quality in the human constitution, do not militate against the 
choice of what only adds to their intensity. We prefer civiliza- 
tion, and glory in its developments, whatever its drawbacks. A 
colored man once illustrated this principle in his statement to 
some northerners who were studying the southern situation: 
When a slave, his master was a preacher who treated him 
well. He was in all worldly ways better off as a slave than 
as a freedman, by his own admission; but he declared with ani- 
mation and emphasis, " I tell you, gemmen, a man's freedom 
is de best thing in all dis world ! " Thus we rejoice in civiliza- 
tion with all its drawbacks. 

Section 205. — While the resources of a country are being 
developed and its industries ever on the increase, the capital 
invested in business fares well, and the laborer is sure of a fair 
reward. This is due to the cheapness and abundance of the 
natural resources. We may conceive it possible that a stationary 
condition might be reached, when supply and demand should be 
so adjusted to each other, and the distribution of proceeds so 
arranged that the laborer would not suffer. But there never has 
been such stationary state under the limitations and enlargements 
of modern invention, and no such industrial adjustment in the 
aggregate at any time. The industries are constantly changing. 
For a while the demand for a particular product rapidly increases, 
and then, in complication with commercial crises, or changes of 
fashion, it suddenly abates. Numerous examples of the kind 
are to be found in industrial history. A few years since thou- 
sands were employed in the manufacture of hoop-skirts, an 



ScC. 20J).] THE SHIFTING OF INDUSTRIES. 39 1 

industry which is now dead, and with its death came the loss of 
employment, with embarrassment and want, to many a family 
(Rogers). The iron business is undergoing great revolutions. 
The Bessemer process has left many thousands of puddlers with- 
out occupation (Brassey). Only seven short years ago the iron 
trade of England was greatly stimulated by the "good times" 
and the building of railroads everywhere; but it no longer sup- 
plies the railroads of the world, and if it did, its market would 
be weakened, as there are fewer railroads building than formerly. 
At this moment (December, 1878) the cotton and iron interest 
of England is paralyzed, the manufacturer is suffering an abate- 
ment if not a cessation of profits, and the workmen in these 
industries are on the point of starvation. 

The invention and multiplication of machinery, in the ability 
it confers to do more work with the same number of hands, are 
constantly operating in the same direction; for, even if most 
kinds of machinery may benefit the laborer in the end, it always 
requires time for the adjustment, and the inventor does not 
wait for the completion of adjustments till he and his coadjutor, 
the capitalist, set up another dumb multiplier of the working 
hand, to the consternation of the hungry man seeking employ- 
ment. Still other causes of disturbance, by no means neces- 
sary and inevitable, may from time to time be stealthily sprung 
into existence by powerful classes for the still further increase of 
their power, to the injury of others; such, for example, as the 
creation by law of special privileges for capital, or as tampering 
with the standard of commercial values necessitating re-adjust- 
ments which cannot take place without suffering. But even if 
there should be no perverse interference like this, there will be 
constant disturbances, requiring constant readjustment as long 
as inventions continue to be made, as long as the industries 
change from one locality to another, as long as the fashions con- 
tinue to be fickle, as long, in short, as the industries are vari- 
able, — retrograde here, stationary there, and elsewhere advanc- 
ing with greater or less rapidity. These changes cannot be 
prevented, and the millions of laborers cannot be brought into 



392 PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE. {Chap. XXXI. 

harmony with the demand for their labor by any scheme of 
adjustment. No intelligence short of omniscience could adjust 
labor to this capricious mutability. The changes cannot be 
foreseen, and the laborers are locally tied down by forces of 
inertia which only a small percentage of them can readily over- 
come. Poor men with families and unmarried women cannot 
shift from place to place with the demands of labor. Accord- 
ing to Adam Smith, the human is " of all sorts of luggage, the 
most difficult to be transported." It is still so, and from the 
nature of the case, must always be so. Perfect justice to the 
laborer requires that he shall be present at the precise point 
where his services are most needed; but such perfect mobility 
of labor does not and cannot obtain. Only the wildest vague- 
thinking visionary could speculate on the basis of such an 
assumption. No one who has thought out the subject in detail, 
with a chart of human nature and of the industries in his mind, 
can be sanguine of any near approach to the economical har- 
mony which presumes that laborers may always be where they 
are most wanted. 

But this is not merely a question of local adjustment. Jus- 
tice to the laborer requires not only that he shall be at the right 
place, but that he shall be able to turn his hand to the kind of 
work which needs to be done. His case requires not only 
mobility, but mechanical versatility. But in this he is the vic- 
tim of the division of labor. All his life he has been tied down 
to one simple mechanical act till he has no aptness for anything 
else. He has been drilled by his industrial education to a stiff, 
narrow uniformity, which is the very opposite of versatility. The 
laborer is barred, by the modern conditions of his craft, from 
entering into the economical harmonies which presume ever 
speedy and perpetual adjustments between the worker and his 
work. 

It is true that reformers have panaceas for all of these ills. 
They have clearly seen the detriment to skilled industry growing 
out of mere bookish education, and have endeavored in the way 
of remedy to associate labor with study. There are many schools 



Sec. 205.] industrial schools. 393 

of this character in Germany, France, Switzerland, and some in 
this country. They are doing good in their way and supplying 
a need which is every day becoming greater. As the industries 
are becoming constantly more complicated, trained minds with 
trained hands become more and more necessary for their direc- 
tion; and such schools will accomplish much if they prevent a 
falling off in the needed supply of skilled artisans. But it is 
extravagant to expect them, as some do, to transform the field 
of labor into an Eden of fitness and harmony. The various 
forms of industrial education through schools of design, trade 
schools, professional schools, commercial schools, developing 
schools, in which practice is united with study, are expected not 
only to secure the doing of work in the right way and at the 
right time, and far more rapidly than at present,but they are to 
transform the workers of the world into willing creatures — and 
all are to be workers then — who "will labor for pleasure and not 
for gain or from interest." — (Royce). But admitting that these 
schools would have this magical power, are we to take it for 
granted that all the inhabitants of the civilized world will be able 
to secure their advantages? What are these schools doing now? 
Mainly training men and women in fine work for fine people, 
or training them for foremen and not for plebeian workers. 
This of itself is very well, good as far as it goes, and worthy of 
all encouragement, but it does not touch the great mass of in- 
dustries which are hard, repulsive, and usually ill-paid. Just 
where the greatest need is, this remedy has no virtue. These 
schools have little relation to the indispensable labors of civilized 
life, and can have little, for here human and other machines do 
the work without the need of education. This fine training 
in the schools, be it ever so industrial, only co-operates with 
education in general to create distaste for all the coarser and 
rougher forms of industry, and it leaves the discordances as 
great as ever between the worker and his work. 

Will these fluctuations in the industries ever cease? Will not 
the great centers of commerce and industry, in the future as in 
the past, keep on shifting from one country to another? Or 



394 PROSPECTS OF WORKING people. [Chap. XXXI. 

will invention come to an end, and all the countries of the 
earth become thoroughly settled up and improved without the 
wearing out of lands, so that the centers of commerce and of 
the industries, and the kinds of industry, and the proportion 
they bear to one another shall become fixed, with the popula- 
tions of countries adjusted thereto for any great length of time 
together? Under the fluctuating climates, deteriorating soils, 
and exhausting mines of the earth, this can hardly ever be. 
Even communistic despotism could not establish and maintain 
any such fixed condition of things; and we are not called on to 
discuss the fate of the laborer under circumstances so utterly 
improbable. 

Section 206. — The reward of the laborer must depend largely 
on the numbers of those who are competing for employment. 
The rate of increase, therefore, among laboring people becomes 
a powerful factor in determining the ability of laborers to com- 
mand the situation, and no one who is interested in the well- 
being of the working people can afford to overlook it. Certain 
economists have been so thoroughly dominated by the concep- 
tion of the "economical harmonies" as to slur over the question 
of population as a matter of little significance. One of the most 
marvelous "demonstrations" to be found in treatises on eco- 
nomical subjects is that by which Carey and Perry prove to their 
own satisfaction that, with the improvement of a country and its 
accumulation of capital, the laborers must fare better and better. 
Perry thus sums it up: "This demonstration is extremely impor- 
tant; for it proves beyond a cavil, that the value of labor tends 
constantly to rise, not only as compared with the value of the 
material commodities which, by the aid of capital, it helps to 
create, a truth we have seen before, but also as compared with 
the value of the use of its co-partner capital itself; and there- 
fore, that there is inwrought in the very nature of things a ten- 
dency towards equality of condition among men. God has 
ordered it so." — (Polit. Econ., 230). 

This is, indeed, the acme of economical optimism — pity it 



Sec. 206.I THE laborer's improvement conditional. 395 

were not true; but we fear that God does not ordain Utopias 
for mankind in any such absolute way. God's bounties are only 
offered on conditions which involve more or less self-sacrifice; 
and the conditions must be observed and the sacrifices made 
or the bounties are not bestowed. Laborers cannot reap the 
benefits of increased capital unless they strictly observe the con- 
ditions on which such benefits accrue. The "demonstration" 
here referred to (p. 229) takes no account of conditional factors 
in the problem. It ignores the fact that capital itself sets up 
dumb competitors of the very laborers who are looking to cap- 
ital for employment. But admitting that this machine-competi- 
tion is neutralized in the end by increased demand for products, 
still the "demonstration" totally ignores the competition of 
laborers among themselves, which, without prudence in the 
multiplication of their class, might become even more intense, 
notwithstanding the increase of capital. It ignores furthermore 
the law of diminishing returns when through over-population 
the soil is pressed for greater production, which is only to be had 
by a greater proportional outlay. If this demonstration were 
true, in all old countries where capital is plenty and interest 
low, wages would be high; but the reverse is true. In old coun- 
tries where interest is low, wages are low; and in new countries 
where interest is high, wages are high, and there is far more 
equality among the people : and where wages are high, none 
need be very poor though none may yet have become rich. 
Time is required for the inequalities of civilization to develop. 

It may be laid down as an axiom that the lowest breeds of 
civilized peoples evince a recklessness in multiplying which is 
only equalled by their shiftlessness in providing; and it is to be 
feared that, in the future as in the past, only the mortality from 
overcrowding, mal-nutrition, vice, and disease will keep this 
class from gaining on others. But let us take a more cheerful 
view of it. Let us suppose that population will be kept within 
limits by voluntary effort. Does this involve no cross? 
Restraint on population involves self-denial, emotional repres- 
sion, defective life, suffering. Not marrying till late, or not 



396 PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE. [Chap. XXXI. 

marrying at all, is to stifle hereditary impulse of the strongest 
character ; and this with most natures involves serious discord- 
ance, physical as well as mental. It is only possible to avoid 
the one evil by suffering another; and this will be found true, 
whatever the means used to keep population within bounds. 

Section 207. — Since this was writtten, a speculative romance 
on the subject has been published — Progress and Poverty, by 
Henry George. It recognizes to the full extent the inequality 
and injustice which are becoming intensified under civilization; 
but it has a panacea, an elixir of life, a world-cure, which will 
destroy the seeds of all social disease, and restore a perfectly 
healthy circulation among all the members of society. It 
reminds one of Godwin's Political Justice and Condorcet's 
Tableau Historique; but, unlike them, it does not begin by 
changing man through educational means as a necessary step to 
the changing of society; it begins and ends by a single act of the 
State, whereby humanity and society are to be revolutionized and 
exalted. It is in the genuine vein of the world-mender: "What 
I, therefore, propose, as the simple yet sovereign remedy, which 
will raise wages, increase the earnings of capital, extirpate 
pauperism, abolish poverty, give remunerative employment to 
whoever wishes it, afford free scope to human powers, lessen 
crime, elevate morals, and taste, and intelligence, purify govern- 
ment, and carry civilization to yet nobler hights, is — to appro- 
priate rent by taxation.''' — (Progress and Poverty, 364). That is 
it — simple and definite. Like all the infallible remedies, it cures 
all the diseases. 

There are to be no other taxes; the entire virtue of social 
regeneration lies in the "confiscation of rent." The great 
body of our yeomen owning their little farms, and consti- 
tuting the best element in society, yet bearing the brunt of 
extortion by monopoly and discriminations against them by 
"protection," are now to be finished at one swoop, in the name 
of justice, by the government pouncing upon them and confis- 
cating their capital in land, while all other capital great and 
small is left untouched, except to be relieved of all further taxa- 



SeC. 20?.] MATHUSIANISM. 397 

tion. And this measure is to regenerate society. The case is 
made out as certain railroad maps are made — by distortion, 
contraction, and omission, with a broad line for the road and 
its branches, till it appears to be the only considerable railway in 
the whole country. What with undue emphasis and elaboration, 
bare mention and slurring over, occasional vagueness, and total 
omission, with outright sophistry, confident assertion, and auda- 
cious paradox, the treatise is a brilliant one, and has had a selling 
success in different senses, being well calculated to mislead people 
who read hastily, and are without a sufficient knowledge of 
political economy. 

We refer to the book in this connection on account of its 
assumed utter refutation of all Malthusian ideas. It denies the 
law of diminishing returns, and maintains that the denser popu- 
lation is, the greater the returns to labor. To this the proper 
reply is, there might be greater returns up to a certain limit, but 
less and less from that limit on. A hundred people might live 
more comfortably from a square mile of land than ten people 
could ; but it does not follow that one thousand inhabitants to 
the square mile could subsist better than one hundred to the 
square mile. But our author gives no hint of any such limit; 
as much as to say that because an acre of land with forty apple 
trees will produce ten times as much fruit as an acre with only 
four trees, therefore, an acre containing four hundred trees will 
produce ten times as much as an acre with forty trees. 

But how is it made to appear that the more people there are 
the greater the amount of production to each one ? The 
author states a case from California, in which it is fairly shown 
that it cost more to produce a given .quantity whenever it 
became necessary to tax the natural resources to any consider- 
able extent. The statement illustrates the law of diminishing 
returns; but then he proceeds formally to explain it all away. 
In showing the greater production of California per head after 
the population became considerable, he recognizes the assistance 
given to labor by "roads, wharves, flumes, railroads, steamboats, 
telegraphs, and machinery of all kinds" — forms of capital; yet 



39^ PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE. [Chap. XXXI. 

he proceeds with the exposition precisely as if capital played no 
part in it; and what should be credited to capital (imported or 
surplus labor saved) is formally credited to the greater popula- 
tion ! But he not only ignores capital in this disquisition, but 
after recognizing, in his previous statement, the assistance which 
capital gives, he then finishes the chapter by formally denying 
that capital is a factor of any consequence in the problem ! 

But there is still another argument why the law of diminishing 
returns is totally at fault — an argument which is at once funda- 
mental and conclusive ! It cannot be that greater expense is 
necessary to equal production as countries grow older, because 
forsooth "man cannot exhaust or lessen the powers of nature" 
on account of "the indestructibility of matter and the persistence 
of force " ! Such use of science surpasses even Joseph Cook's. 
Only think of its relevancy! Man cannot lessen or exhaust the 
powers of nature in a given territory to subsist its population, 
because he is not mighty enough to annihilate an atom of matter 
or a foot-pound of force ! It has been supposed all along that it 
is not matter and force in general, but in particular forms, which 
constitute man's subsistence, and that he could, by taxing the 
soil too heavily, rob it of its power to produce these useful 
forms; but it seems that this was clearly a mistake, for man can- 
not bring about diminishing returns to labor for his sustenance, 
except by absolutely annihilating matter and force ! It is true 
that man is not so mighty as this, but it is most unfortunately 
true that he has been mighty enough to desolate great regions 
of this earth, till "where were once great cities and teeming 
populations are now squalid villages and barren wastes." These 
are the author's own words under a different head; but he does 
not once inquire why it is that bats, and owls, and jackals haunt 
where once were busy cities, in the midst of fertile plains now 
barren. It is given as an ultimate fact, without cause, that men 
will not breed in some places as they used to; consequently ther 1 
is no danger of population overtaking subsistence ! 

Contrast with the above vagary, Roscher's plain common 
sense, concerning the indestructibilty of matter, and the failure 



Sec. 207-1 FAMINES — HOW CAUSED. 399 

of the soil to produce: "As no matter wholly disappears from 
the earth, so, in exhaustion of the soil, it is only a question con- 
cerning the dislocation of its valuable constituents, many of 
which may be entirely lost to human use." — (Nationalokonomik 
des Ackerbaues, 72.) 

The author, in his disproof of Malthusianism, labors to show 
that density of population in Ireland, India, and China has noth- 
ing to do with the famines in these countries. He refers them 
to bad government. We admit the value of this element, but if 
bad government were the sole, or even the principal, cause of 
famines, we should certainly look for famines as a common 
thing the world over. If this author's theory be true, how comes 
it to pass that famines almost always take place in countries 
where population is most dense? Famines ought to be worst 
where government is worst without regard to population, and 
where the people are thickest they are wealthiest, and ought 
not to starve at all ! Are we, indeed, to accept the philosophy 
that a population of one thousand to the square mile, as in parts 
of India, can subsist as easily from the soil as one-tenth of that 
number, and that when famines set in, they will be no worse 
where population is dense than where it is sparse? If the pop- 
ulation of Ireland had been but four millions instead of eight 
when the potato rot came, would the famine have raged there 
as it did? Is it just as easy to feed two mouths as one when 
rations are scarce? 

It may be true that, as in Brazil, there may be famines in 
sparse settlements of indolent people who depend solely on the 
soil for a living and have little or no commercial intercourse 
with the rest of the world, but that does not prove that it is just 
as easy to subsist a large number as a small one from the same 
territory. The author begins his refutation of Malthus by the 
assertion that "the power of producing wealth in any form is the 
power of producing subsistence;" and before the chapter ends 
he slides into the substitution of the word wealth for subsistence; 
and because a considerable population may produce more 
wealth per head than a sparse population, therefore, he con- 



400 THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY. [Chap. XXXII. 

eludes, a dense population can subsist more easily than a sparse 
one on the products of labor. But we must discriminate 
between kinds of wealth. Some kinds will keep people alive 
and some will not. We are liable to bad seasons, sometimes to 
a succession of them, and through a conspiracy of causes this 
may sometimes, in the future as in the past, be general. If the 
soil should not produce for one year, what would all other 
wealth do to subsist the population of the world? The more 
people there were and the wealthier they were, the worse off 
would they be, and the more of them would die of starvation. 
What would millions of wealth in hardware, building materials, 
and clothing then do to keep soul and body together? It is true 
these things can be exchanged for food when there is food; but 
the question here concerns the quantity of subsistence itself 
which may be produced from the soil for its population; and no 
profusion of ingenious paradox can set aside the fact that the 
greater the number above a certain density of population, to be 
subsisted (though each were a Rothschild in wealth), the greater 
the danger of short rations. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 



INFLUENCE OF THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY OF CLASSES ON 
SOCIETY. 

Section 208. — In order to understand the social and intel- 
lectual status of vast bodies of mankind, and attempt a forecast 
of their future, we must consider the relative increase of the 
various classes in society. Whatever the system of education 
may be, it is the relative increase of classes which must largely 
determine from generation to generation the aggregate or average 



Sec. 20& '.] DIFFICULTIES REGARDING POPULATION. 40I 

of human elevation. There is no problem with which science and 
philosophy have to deal more central and all-pervading than this, 
and none which is more perplexing or apparently more difficult 
of solution. It is easy to write flippantly about it, and run off with 
a few isolated facts, or put down flat contradictions on opposite 
pages without seeming to perceive it. Thus, the working peo- 
ple, the peasants of France and Switzerland, are increasing none 
at all or very little. This must prove something. It shows, they 
say, that the small farm system with the possible thrift thus 
secured, exercises restraint on population. Very well : but how 
is it that these people have avoided tenantry and pauperism 
while others in like situation have not ? The peasantry of Eng- 
land did not remain master of the situation by virtue of their 
small holdings, and as a class they have been swept out of exist- 
ence. There may be, indeed there must be, some deeper cause 
for the prudence of the French-speaking peoples. Small hold- 
ings in India are passing into the hands of the usurers from peo- 
ple who will borrow, or who must, and pay a rate of interest as 
deadly to their class as an Indian famine. The Irish suffer from 
a like fatality ; and they marry young and have large families 
whether living in homes of their own, working the land of other 
people, or laboring by the day. What glib philosophy will be 
called in to explain these anomalies ? Until recently in the 
United States all nationalities had large families. This proved, 
they said, that people bred rapidly on plenty in connection with a 
free and easy outlet to virgin lands. But now, we have more 
wealth than formerly, plenty still, and no lack of lands, and yet 
the families of native Americans are falling off in size. Those 
who are best off are usually least prolific. During the last 
decade — 1870-1880 — Northern whites increased about twelve 
per cent., Southern whites thirty per cent., and colored people 
thirty-three per cent. — (Popular Science Monthly, September, 
1 881). What law, then, governs the size of American families? 
And if there be such a law, what light does it throw on the law 
of population in France and Ireland ? 

We can only study this question by the light of the past and 



402 THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY. [Chap. XXXII, 

of what is taking place under our own eyes. We may define, 
with some degree of precision, certain conditions which affect 
the rate of multiplication, without pretending to define all of 
them. While a people is rising into greatness and is energetic 
and hopeful, it multiplies rapidly. When it becomes powerful 
and wealthy, and the refined pleasures are emulously cultivated 
by such as can afford to do so, there is little or no increase of 
the leading type except by transferrence from foreign countries 
or from the lower classes. Take Rome as an example. The 
old Roman stock did not keep good its numbers under the 
enjoyment of the greatness, which in former ages, the Roman 
people had won by their hardihood and heroism; and the last 
defenders of the Roman empire were not Romans. As already 
stated, the possession of overplenty leads in time to the refine- 
ments of luxury, while these in turn are sure, through emulation 
in the vanities, to generate dissipation and debauchery, and appear 
to be everywhere and at all times incompatible with vigorous 
reproduction. 

Associate causes co-operate to this end. Idleness and sump- 
tuous living are no doubt of themselves unfavorable to that per- 
fect action of the physical system which is a necessary condition 
of healthful child-bearing. As a rule, the steady-working, plain- 
living people have the most and the healthiest children. In the 
upper ranks of civilization, where the means of enjoyment are 
abundant, it becomes the fashion to enjoy, and decided repug- 
nance arises toward the self-denial which continuous child-bear- 
ing necessitates. The maternal duties are shunned, and to this 
end every known device is called into requisition. These 
devices are not a late result of science, as some friends and ene- 
mies appear to suppose. Even barbarous nations practice some 
form of them, as did the civilized Greeks; and Roman matrons 
under the empire did not allow themselves to be greatly troubled 
with children. That measures were freely used to this end is 
shown in Euripides, Juvenal, and Plutarch. Rulers and censors 
endeavored to prevent the falling off of the old Roman families, 
but there appeared to be no effective remedy. Legislation by 



ScC. 208.] CULTURE VERSUS REPRODUCTION. 403 

premiums and penalties was of no avail. The forfeiture of 
honors and privileges for childlessness did not overcome the 
repugnance to parental duties, and the premiums of privilege 
and inheritance for having children were not sufficient to offset 
the sacrifice it implied of the dissipations of high life. The 
leading families of Rome passed away, one after another, under 
the paralyzing influence of wealth and luxury and their concom- 
itants, and the legacy of imperial greatness, left to other hands, 
wasted away. The descendants of foreigners and slaves could 
not conserve what the old race had won. Of like character had 
been the fate of Greece. After the Macedonian conquest the 
Greek race became adulterated with foreign blood. There was 
no longer "a free State proud of their unmixed race." Accord- 
ing to Tacitus, the old Athenian race was extinct before his time. 
The old names eventually disappeared, and a mixture of former 
slaves and foreigners held the places of the historic Greeks. 

Herbert Spencer takes the very tenable ground that the more 
culture and refinement prevail the less will people multiply. 
Greg and Galton (quoted by Darwin) take substantially the same 
view, though for reasons, in part, additional to those which are 
given by Spencer. Professor Bowen has adopted the same 
view, using it, however, to a different end. Too much drilled 
brains, like too much wealth, luxury, and indolence, put a stop 
to healthy and vigorous reproduction. The highest known con- 
ditions of civilization contribute doubly to this end: by favoring 
an indolent, dissipating class on one extreme ; and on the other, 
by driving men and women, under the lash of competition, into 
nervous exhaustion with all its attendant evils. 

From the preceding considerations it might hastily be inferred 
that when civilization covers the whole available earth, if such a 
thing can be, population will of its own accord become stationary. 
There are considerations, however, which make difficulty with 
this view. Some countries have, indeed, become stationary in 
population, and then declined; but this has usually taken place 
through change of commercial centers and deterioration of the 
soil. All highly civilized countries are not now necessarily sta- 



404 THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY. \Chap. XXXII. 

tionary in population because civilized. Some of the European 
nations of greatest culture are sending a large surplus of popula- 
tion eastward and westward every year. For this surplus there 
is no comfortable and inviting room at home; and while so 
many are emigrating, there is still, in most of these countries, a 
constant increase in the home census. There are two grand 
reasons why civilization does not of itself render the population 
of a country stationary. One is that the causes of sterility do 
not affect all classes alike, so that while some become stationary 
or decline in numbers, others still increase more or less rapidly; 
and some may increase very rapidly. The other is that new 
sub-races and mixed breeds appear to be constantly springing 
up, which have great constitutional vigor, and no insurmountable 
repugnance to rapid multiplication for considerable periods, till 
they in turn become debauched. 

Section 209. — In most European countries there are classes 
which multiply very rapidly, though there may be other classes 
which do not. The fruitful families belong mostly to classes 
which are poor or only moderately well-to-do. The conditions 
which favor small families never penetrate to all ranks of society, 
and while this is the case, there is no guaranty that the world 
will fill up with a high grade of human beings, and then forever 
maintain a proper balance between want and supply. In 
England, Sweden (Bowen), and most countries, the laboring 
people increase much more rapidly than the so-called higher 
classes. In France there is greater prolificacy among the inhab- 
itants of the poorer, than among those of the richer, depart- 
ments. The aristocracies are everywhere running out, as in the 
Roman empire, and they would become extinct but for constant 
accessions from the ranks below; and some of these come up 
from almost the very bottom. Reigning dynasties are not apt to 
last long; and once a family has reached the pinnacle of human 
greatness, its doom is written. There are living those from 
whose loins will spring by direct descent the great historic char- 
acters of the future. Where are those happy, though uncon- 
scious, patriarchs now to be found ? Among the distinguished 



Sec. 209.] HARD-WORKERS MOST PROLIFIC. 405 

of earth ? Scarcely one of them. If they could be identified, 
they would be found in the middle and lower classes in some of 
the fields of useful industry. [Sir H. S. Maine observes, "that 
the best securities for a pure pedigree through males are com- 
parative obscurity and (I might almost say) comparative 
poverty, if not extreme." — (Fortnightly Review, February, 1882).] 
What saves the rate of increase in population is that all cannot, 
or will not, get up into the paradise of wealth and culture — only 
a comparatively small percentage. 

The proportion of classes in civilized countries does not depend 
altogether on the relative increase of such classes; it is deter- 
mined rather by economical conditions which invite, or rather 
compel the transferrence of numbers from one class to another, 
in the equalization of supply and demand. The peasant class in 
England disappeared through the operation of economical, and 
not of physiological, causes. The upper class is kept full, or it 
may be increased, by accessions from the lower classes. But 
this does not set aside the fact that the hard-working people — 
those who provide the luxuries for the more favored to enjoy — 
that such are generally the most prolific, and maintain the high 
rate of increase in population. If machinery could do all the 
labor with little wear, all might have plenty, and time to enjoy 
it, and the causes of relaxed reproduction, resulting from pam- 
pered leisure, would affect the whole people ; but this condition 
is not a possible one. If all classes could be affected equally 
by the enervating conditions of high life in civilization, we 
might, indeed, expect a general arrest of reproduction. But 
nothing of the kind ever has existed in any society, and from 
the nature of the case never can, except by virtue of a mental, 
social, and physical revolution for which there is at present no 
warrant. 

Hard physical labor and the anxieties of business-care antag- 
onize the enjoyment of the artistic side of life. Necessary care 
and labor draw on human resources, and what they get, the 
refinements of feeling cannot have. If the struggle of life 
brought little care with no anxiety or overwork, we might then 



406 THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY. \Chap. XXXII. 

calculate on the unobstructed action of all the appliances of 
culture. We might then count on an indefinite progress in 
knowledge and refinement among all the people, with such cor- 
ollaries as properly belong thereto. We should expect the reign 
of justice, and common sense, and common sympathy, when 
there would be little need for the force which governments 
use. Under the sway of science and rationality, passion 
would be subordinated to thought, and population would be 
adjusted to the environment. But this would be getting a new 
world out of moral elements so different from anything known 
in human nature past or present, that it would be equivalent to 
a creation de novo. There is no basis for any such dream. 
While the greater portion of mankind in civilized society have 
always been drudges, the fact that human wants, mainly of a 
frivolous character, keep fully up with the increased facilities of 
production, as civilization advances, points to the indefinite con- 
tinuance of life for the many heavily weighted with work and 
care. Dr. George M. Beard truly says: "One cannot imagine 
a nation in which all should be rich and intelligent; for a people, 
composed wholly of educated millionaires, intelligence would 
be a curse, and wealth the worst form of poverty. For Ameri- 
cans, as for all people, this law is as remorseless as gravity, and 
will not go out of its way at the beck, either of philanthropy or 
philosophy." 

The common school education, which is intended to elevate 
society in general, can only accomplish this end to a certain 
extent, and then maintain, without elevating further, the posi- 
tion thus secured. It lifts a certain proportion within reach of 
higher education, and these pass on into the higher orders of 
society, which, being diverted by other motives do not hold 
their own by natural increase. And just so far as education 
seizes upon the toiling millions and causes them to exercise 
restraint, it is families that are affected rather than the masses. 
The better sort multiply less and lose in relative numbers, while 
the more animal may remain unaffected to breed as rapidly as 
ever. Thus, by the very act of lifting a portion of society up, 



Sec. 20Q.\ EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCE LIMITED. 407 

and giving it self-control, may education defeat its aim of gen- 
eral psychological elevation, by maintaining a larger opening in 
society to be filled up by the improvident and shiftless who will 
not exercise such restraint. It thus becomes difficult to push 
the advantages of general education beyond a certain point. It 
is even true that, "with all the manifold means and appliances 
for popular culture that the present age can boast, the ' masses ' 
are in danger of becoming a less, rather than a more, cultured 
body." — (Thomas Wright, Contemporary Review, July, 1881). 
The tables of the ninth census (1870) show that, even in States 
which, like Massachusetts and Ohio, have given most attention 
to the education of their children, there was an increase of 
illiteracy during the decade. And then it is quite possible to be 
"the most common-schooled, and the least cultivated, people 
in the world," as Minister Lowell asserts of his fellow country- 
men. 

Another consideration respecting the influence of classes on 
society must not be overlooked in connection with the relative 
increase of classes. The great middle class is that which, more 
than any other, conserves the moral and political status of 
society. And of this class those who are at once owners and 
cultivators of the soil, contribute to society its most substantial 
elements. The best men and women are born on the plains 
and the hills and in the valleys, and for the first few years of 
their lives breathe the fresh, pure air of the country, and then 
push their way into larger fields of usefulness. In times past, it 
has been the fate of this class, in the course of national changes, 
to become gradually extinguished, leaving the so-called upper 
and lower classes, with an ill-bridged gulf between, when the 
national energy waned and at length succumbed to the aggres- 
sive vigor of ruder races. Rome again affords us a striking 
illustration; and England is shorn of much of her power among 
the nations by the loss of her yeomanry. Instead of an intelli- 
gent, independent, and prolific class on the soil, it becomes, 
under tenantry, a stolid, eminently bucolic class, going to swell 
the ranks of the dependent, toiling, hopeless millions. This 



408 THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY. [Chap. XXXI L 

tendency cannot operate in our own country as yet to any con- 
siderable extent; for those who are thrown out of their homes 
by foreclosure under commereial revulsions, have an outlet still 
in which to retrieve lost ground. But this will not always be so; 
and without greater private as well as political wisdom on the 
part of the people, the time will come when, as a great New 
York newspaper is reported to have said, "The rich men shall 
own the soil, and you shall toil." 

Section 210. — But this is not more a question of classes 
than of races. Blood tells ; at any rate the fashion does, which 
is closely allied with blood as well as with condition. Among 
certain peoples it is the fashion to marry young and have large 
families; and it matters not what the circumstances of the 
responsible parties may be, whether of plenty or of want, their 
descendants are numerous anyway. Some among them might 
not of their own accord care to marry so young, but the fashion 
sweeps them into the current along with the rest. We may 
instance the Celtic Irish as an example, although the race is no 
doubt mixed with a large infusion of Teutonic blood (Lecky). 
One and two-thirds centuries ago, these people numbered but 
eight hundred thousand; now they number many millions, and 
are helping largely to fill up the new places of the earth. They 
are never debauched with luxury, and their methods of life are 
often hardy and rough, and not always orderly and healthy, still 
they are exuberantly prolific. 

Further, there is reason to believe that new races are spring- 
ing into existence, prolific and viable, whose destiny on the 
planet it is not possible now to forecast. The old notion, 
mainly propagated in the interest of slavery in this country, that 
crosses between unlike races are weak and non-prolific, is 
traversed of late by some of the ethnological masters; and it is 
shown to be in all probability an error. Some of these crosses, 
as that between the negro and the white, and that between the 
Indian and the white, appear to have equal constitutional vigor 
with either of the crossing races, and with less intellect than the 
higher, but more than the lower. The crosses are scattered far 



Sec. 210.] VALUE OF RACE MULTIPLICATION. 409 

and wide over the Americas, and whenever their location is 
somewhat isolated, and their settlements beyond the civilized 
limits, they may preserve their identity, become fixed as a type, 
and rise to an historical significance not at present dreamed of. 
It is to be recollected, however, that the greater mobility of 
modern individuals and the spread of cosmopolitanism are more 
unfavorable than anything in times past, to the formation of 
such distinct types. But even if no distinctive type of man may 
grow out of such crossing and intermixture, the infusion of the 
lower blood into the higher must have an influence, not only on 
prolificacy, but on industrial capacity, educational susceptibility, 
and psychological elevation. 

The ancient civilizations were overrun and taken possession 
of by hordes of barbarians. New races took the place of the 
old. It has been assumed that the like cannot take place with 
the nations which are now in, or rising to, their prime. It is 
true that such races will not emerge from unknown or little 
known regions in the East or 'North to overturn nationalities, 
and change the face of the world; but they may arise in our 
very midst. Out of the numerous mixtures taking place in the 
United States, some form more hardy, energetic, and industri- 
ally aggressive than any other may take the lead in multiplica- 
tion, incorporating into itself minor types, and eventually filling 
America largely to the exclusion of others. This privilege of 
destiny appears not to fall to the lot of the Yankee proper, 
since, under modern influences, he is greatly falling off in pro- 
lificacy. As he becomes reduced in the relative weight of num- 
bers, he will fall in ethnological significance, and by absorption 
into others, disappear as a distinctive moral and physical type. 
He is yielding to the Irishman and the German. But if these 
should become too much infected with the debaucheries of 
civilization, they may eventually succumb to some other, — possi- 
bly to some type with admixture of blood not by any means the 
most refined. We must remember that it is not necessarily the 
highest peoples that come to predominate. It is not the highest 
but the most fitting that prevail. It is the hardy and energetic 



4IO THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY. \Chdp. XXX IL 

rather than the refined. The result must be determined by conflict 
in some of its forms, and as the arena shifts, new fighting qualities 
come into play. When it was a trial at arms, the elements of 
success were quite different from what it will be when the result 
is determined mainly on an industrial and economical basis. It 
is the people that breeds and has enterprise and push to make 
room for its progeny, that gets the most of the earth's surface. 
It is the people that can stand the drudgeries of life and still 
multiply, that can live on little and still preserve its constitu- 
tional vigor — such a people, in the close and desperate compe- 
tition of civilized life will extend its area, and crowd out those 
who are wanting in those strong points for the contest. The 
few wants of simply constituted, industrious people, are light 
weight in the struggle of life. It is practical superiority. The 
Anglo-Saxon, who is habituated to abundance, must strain to 
the utmost to procure it, and his life is attended with more dis- 
appointment, and is more exhausting because of his more num- 
erous wants. The more dependents he has the worse this is ; 
hence, he is best pleased with a small family. The many wants 
with few children weight a man in the battle of life, as much as 
few wants with many children. It is well, from this point of 
view, that our people refuse to the Chinese the privilege of 
immigration. If they really settled in great numbers among us, 
no Americans could stand in competition with them, and our 
industrial classes would be compelled to adopt Chinese habits; 
and the lowering of economical habits would lower the grade of 
character. But who knows but we have already among us some 
type of people who will eventually be our barbarian ? Suppose 
our higher types are losing in comparative prolificacy — and this 
is no supposition, but the demonstrated fact— then will the 
newer types fill up the land, and eventually swallow up the less 
prolific types, and will thus give cast to the psychology of the 
people. 

A diversity of distinct race-types can hardly form in this 
country, as has been formed in Europe. The facilities for inter- 
communication and the use of the same language over so large 



Sec. 2IO.] DRAWBACKS ON PROLIFICACY. 411 

a territory will prevent it, and go far to obliterate the effects 
resulting from differences of climate. Imitation and sympathy, 
among people who so freely intermingle, will be a powerful factor 
in producing uniformity of mental type. There is nothing but 
color to prevent the free interblending of peoples. There will 
probably always be a colored race and a white race distinct from 
each other, but neither varying so greatly within itself as to 
present distinct types. But the blood of some one or more 
types or crosses will, through energy and prolificacy, have a larger 
share than others in the formation of the coming man. 

There are, of course, difficulties in the way of rapid multiplica- 
tion among inferior peoples in the lower classes. They are 
often crowded together in unhealthy districts, often filthy and ill- 
fed, often without medical attendance and intelligent nursing, 
and in consequence, the rate of mortality is higher than it would 
otherwise be. But this only obtains to a partial extent. Usually 
they are tough, and their children surprisingly viable; and earlier 
marriages and the greater rapidity of child-bearing far more than 
make amends for the losses from adverse causes. The census 
returns show this conclusively enough. The negro in the South 
belongs to this category. The mortality among colored children 
is often greater than among white children; but in spite of 
drawbacks, colored families are apt to be large, and the last 
census (1880) shows that the percentage of gain in the colored 
population is greater than in the white population, even with the 
accessions to the latter by immigration. It is true that the battle 
of life may prove too hard for some of the working classes. 
Through unhealthy occupation some operatives may be so 
worsted as to lose the physical vigor necessary to sustain a high 
rate of increase. Some occupations of civilized life so lower 
the vital energies and dwarf body and mind, that those engaged 
in them may not be able to keep their numbers good. But 
optimists will not insist on this sad feature of the case; and there 
will always be rough occupations favoring the hardihood of 
workers who will multiply rapidly. 



412 THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY. [Chap. XXXII. 

Section 211. — The rise and development of human faculties, 
in the course of evolution, may afford grounds for the belief that 
the like process is still to continue for an indefinite period in 
the future ; but this overlooks the great fact that all movement 
goes in careers, reaching its maximum in ascent, and then 
descending. Many such careers are shown in the history of 
mankind. The life of the individual illustrates the law with 
peculiar emphasis ; and the rise and fall of societies, in the gen- 
eral course of history, rigidly follow the same law. As one form 
of institution goes down, another rises ; and the idea that the 
succeeding is always superior to the preceding is not true. The 
systems which arose during the Middle Ages were not equal to 
those which they supplanted. There was nothing in the papal 
and feudal direction of society which challenges the admiration 
of mankind like the older Greek and Roman. Mediaeval insti- 
tutions belonged to lower conditions of humanity. This shows 
that our own civilization, of which we are so justly proud, 
though doubtless superior to any which has ever existed, does 
not establish the rule that improvement necessarily accompanies 
change. The rule which history establishes is that civilizations 
reach a maximum, and then become comparatively stationary or 
decline. It is true that there are now principles of conservation 
which did not exist in former times, such as science and the 
printing press. But these are not advantages which are suscepti- 
ble exclusively of use ; like every good thing, they may be 
neglected or abused. Man is not in their hands to be molded 
according to any supposed inherent tendency in them ; they are 
in man's hands to be dealt with as he wills. The type of peo- 
ple must be equal to the emergency of conservation and use, 
else society will decline, whatever its advantages. Everything 
depends on the moral and intellectual capabilities of the people 
to continue the proper use of their opportunities. If, through 
the mixing of peoples, the type of character declines, then will 
the type of society assuredly deteriorate. Greek civilization 
unequivocally illustrates this law. Greek civilization was main- 
tained by the psychological elevation of the Greek type of mind, 






SeC. 2 1 iJ] COMPARISON WITH GREEK CIVILIZATION. 413 

and when, through the mixing in of other stock, this type lost 
its integrity, Greek civilization came to an end. The monu- 
ments of Greek genius and the education afforded by established 
customs had no power to perpetuate Greek activities after other 
blood had entered into Greek veins. 

Everything considered, the old Greek civilization is the most 
wonderful that has ever existed; and it was the work of the 
descendants of the original Greek gentes which founded little 
states in a locality which was especially adapted to the focusing 
of the commercial and intellectual activity of the times. The 
Roman system was in like manner established by the descen- 
dants of the gentes in Latium, whose chief characteristics appear 
to have been austerity of morals, rigid military discipline, and 
aptness for political organization. But the example of centuries of 
such morals, discipline, and organization, with the remembrance 
of their rewards in success, was not sufficient to maintain the 
grandeur of the Roman system after the pure habits and the 
pure blood had become corrupted. We do not know but there 
is a principle of history to be discerned here, which will direct 
the movement of societies on earth through all time. 

But while it is true that present civilization is, on the whole, 
superior to all others, it is not true that it is superior in all ways. 
Some forms of Greek art reached a development which has 
never since been equaled. One of the best indications of a 
high type of mind is, perhaps, its freedom from bias ; and I 
doubt very much if in our own times, with all our advantages, 
we are superior to the Greeks in this respect. Many Greek 
thinkers approached even the delicate subject of religion with a 
freedom from bias which puts to shame the bigotry still existing 
in the nineteenth century, and is hardly surpassed by the most 
judicial temper of modern inquiry. But still there is an advan- 
tage the modern has, beyond anything known in past history, 
and that is the rigid system of intellectual guidance which has 
been developed in connection with scientific work. There is 
also a body of truths affording a solid basis for the operations of 
future inquiry, such as has never existed before. Still, when we 
19 



414 THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY. [Chap. XXXII. 

consider the great indifference of the mass of the people, and 
the small percentage who avail themselves of these advantages, 
we can readily imagine that with a considerable decline of 
psychological quality, all these advantages might avail but little. 
Take out one-tenth of one per cent, of modern population, 
selecting therefor such as are most interested in scientific truth 
for its own sake, and there would soon be an end to all achieve- 
ment in this direction. And if, in addition, the psychology of 
the remainder should be lowered by a little admixture of weak 
blood, there would be deterioration at once in the tone of society. 
The tenure by which we hold our present high position is by 
no means perfectly assured. 

It hardly seems possible to advance to higher forms of social 
existence except on the warrant of a corresponding advance in 
individual development. A given type of mind clothes itself in 
appropriate social forms, which it has no further power of itself 
to improve. If the social compound is determined by the qual- 
ity of the social units, or individuals, which enter into it, then is 
it important to know whether or not there is a limit to individ- 
ual development. 

The human faculties have emerged one after another in the 
course of human evolution, and no one can say that the process 
has yet come to an end. We are apt to think that there are 
individual minds now superior to any in ancient times. This 
may be a delusion due to natural egotism and to the apparent 
superiority arising from superior opportunity. Ancient genius 
had not the same immense field of suggestiveness which is now 
open to all comers. It is doubtful whether modern genius is 
superior to the ancient in anything except in what relates to 
science, and this is rather the accumulation of past experiences 
than the direct consequence of individual endowment. Galton, 
in Hereditary Genius, reckons that the Athenians were as much 
superior to the English, as the English are to the negroes. The 
estimate, however, so far as relates to the comparison between 
Greeks and English, has reference to average capacity. The 
best Greek minds might not have been much if any superior to 



Sec. 211.] A LIMIT TO DEVELOPMENT. 4 X 5 

the best English minds; but the proportion of mediocres was 
far less in Attica than in England. The pyschology of Athens 
was an elevated plateau from which genius shot up into peaks 
piercing the sky. But this is perhaps due to the fact that one 
class performed the drudgery for another class, which was im- 
pelled by competition to diversified activities in an exalted 
sphere, and which thereby secured for Athens its unchallenged 
superiority. 

Every form has its degree of perfection, and is consequently 
not capable of endless improvement. For illustration, take the 
race horse or greyhound. By breeding and training he can be 
made to reach a certain boundary of speed, which constitutes the 
utmost limit of his perfection. This perfection requires a certain 
collocation of nerve, muscle, and bone, of anatomical parts, and 
physiological functions, and when the precise balance is reached 
which produces the highest results, that balance cannot be dis- 
turbed without deterioration. If the build, for example, is made 
more slender to favor agility, there is a weakening of endurance 
for want of sufficient stomach, lungs, and muscle. 

By proper training, the athlete acquires strength and endur- 
ance for a certain period and to a certain point, but he at length 
reaches a score which no training or device will enable him to 
exceed. It is precisely so with mental training. Man's brain, 
as lying at the basis of mental power, must have sufficient phys- 
ical support in the rest of the bodily system, or it will not be 
equal to the greatest possible results. The exercise of intellect 
may be carried so far as to weaken the physical functions upon 
which the brain depends for its supply of nutriment, and too 
much culture may eventually cut off the capacity for culture. 
Man's body has long since ceased to develop, having acquired 
during the historical period no new capabilities which depend 
on structure outside the brain. On the other hand, the brain 
doubtless has differentiated new capabilities, and these seem to 
have reached, on the whole, as high a grade in ancient as in 
modern times. If this be so, it is not likely that the future man 
will be endowed with mental gifts greater than he has heretofore 



4 1 6 THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY. \Chap. XXXII, 

enjoyed. Here, as everywhere, a limit must be reached which 
it is not possible to pass. The mental faculties, through adapta- 
tion to changed circumstances, may change in cast, but not in 
their aggregate of power. Still this is a vague subject, on which 
we cannot afford to dogmatize. 

Granting that the human mind reached, or nearly reached, its 
maximum development in ancient times, that does not necessarily 
imply permanence of the mental forms which then prevailed. 
The mental structure changes; but while it gains in particular 
directions, it necessarily loses in others. What, for example, it 
has gained in the capacity for thinking, it may have lost in the 
capacity for art. Now one type of mental execution prevails, 
then another, and after awhile still another, and it may be an 
open question which is the greatest. 

There are two lines imaginable for individual development by 
breeding and training to take, the one scientific, the other hap- 
hazard. So far as man is concerned, the former is just barely 
imaginable; it is not likely ever to be adopted. The latter will 
prevail in the future as it has in the past; and the dominant 
want of the times will determine the direction of highest 
achievement. The intermixing of lower with higher peoples, for 
which opportunity is greater now than ever before, is more likely 
to breed downward than upward, resulting in a moderate grade 
of mediocrity, with occasional instances of spasmodic capacity, 
such as we now witness. When the blood of lower and higher 
stocks is thoroughly intermingled, which, of course, requires a 
long time, it must result in something like an average between 
the two, as we may any time assure ourselves by examples of 
crosses between the Caucasian and African races. The optim- 
istic vagary that crossing necessarily improves, elevating the 
progeny into a psychological altitude greater than that of the 
parentage, has no warrant. Races have improved through the 
stimulus of the environment, and the simplest race-types, like 
the Jewish, Greek, and Roman, have reared the great monu- 
ments of history. It is true that the mixing of two equal 
branches of a great race may so far unsettle fixedness of char- 



Sec. 212.] RECENT PROGRESS. 417 

acter as to increase susceptibility to forces in the environment 
which cause change and improvement; and the Teutonic tri- 
umphs of modern history are probably in part due to this cause. 
But when the intermixing is universal, and inferior blood is 
creeping in to taint the whole mass in time, it is a condition 
which tells unfavorably for the cherished dream of man's future 
exaltation. 

Section 212. — There is also a great fact of modern history 
which, it may be thought, invalidates preceding considerations 
concerning the rapid increase of the hardy rather than the high. 
No doubt the general psychological level is a good deal higher 
now than it was two hundred years ago. During the very period 
when there should be degeneracy from the gain of the lower on 
the higher, the reverse has proved to be true. There are more 
sensibility and more intelligence than ever before, in spite of the 
Cassandras of ethnological speculation concerning the relative 
increase of classes and races. Very true. These two centuries 
have been very remarkable. Never before has science so shone 
with an ever-increasing lustre on all subjects, speculative and 
practical. The joint action of discovery and invention has armed 
mankind with many a weapon of high civilization. Science has 
penetrated the dark places of the human understanding, and 
literally driven out devils which were torturing mankind. This 
work has been seconded by many of the appliances of education, 
and the artisan's child may know more, if he will, than the wisest 
men knew in times past. We who have lived in the midst of 
this, vainly imagine it will continue without ceasing. If it should 
do so, it would falsify all history. We have already intimated 
how difficult it is to push the good influences of education 
beyond a certain limit. The antagonizing tendencies bring the 
progressive to a stand-still, and may for a time, under psycho- 
logical decline, force them into reaction. And so far as sensibil- 
ity is concerned, it is just possible that it may advance quite too 
far, under the nerve-stimulating influences of a tense civilization, 
for vigor of body or peacefulness of mind. The expensive 
vanities and unhealthy frivolities, the unsettled state of classes 



41 8 THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY. [C/iap. XXXII. 

and their discontent, the exhaustion of one class and the besti- 
ality of another, the unrestrained reproduction of the baser sort, 
must gather force against the elevating influences, and in time 
may result in deterioration. It may thus turn out that a future 
age, though better armed with the weapons of civilization than 
those which preceded it, is yet fated to be their psychological 
inferior. Our confident civilization, like that of southern Europe 
in the classic periods, may in some form, have its periods of 
reaction, its dark ages. Even with the light of science, the 
advantages of the printing press, and all the modern appliances 
for conserving what is gained, it is hardly safe to count on a 
general advance of the nations and peoples, when all shall stand 
abreast on the highest known plane of civilization. No doubt, 
civilization will yet greatly extend itself over the face of the earth, 
and prevail, perhaps, in all lands ; but while certain bodies of 
mankind are going up in the scale, others are stationary, or going 
down. The little territory of Europe has illustrated this fact in 
modern times, and under modern influences. The balance of 
population is constantly changing, the channels and centres of 
commerce as constantly shifting; and they probably always will, 
whether in the general ascent or decline of humanity on earth ; 
hence, there is no guaranty that this see-saw of nations and 
peoples will not continue, in the future as in the past, to char- 
acterize the history of mankind. 

We have been looking forward ; let us cast a glance in the 
opposite direction. The ancestors of the highest peoples now 
on earth, who are so proud of their exaltation, were, only a few 
hundred years ago, warriors, pirates, plunderers. From very 
much the same kind of stock, with so little rational promise in 
it, came the civilized people of Greece and Rome. They were 
better at breaking heads and trampling down the weak, than in 
elevating humanity by intention; but elevation did proceed from 
these people, neverthless, Precisely the same may be said of 
the ancient Jews. What kind of people, then, will selection 
under modern industrial conflict bring into mastery hundreds of 
years hence ? Will it not be rather a plodding, patient, endur- 



Sec. 212.] THE FUTURE MAN. 419 

ing people, with evenness of character and mediocrity of talent? 
something like a Caucasianized edition of the Chinese char- 
acter ? 

I am aware that I found this subject in a good deal of obscur- 
ity, and that I have probably done little to place it in clearer 
light. The attempt has doubtless been more successful in rais- 
ing difficulties than in settling them. Enough has, perhaps, 
been presented in definite form to bring in question, at least, 
the fine optimism of some evolutionists who are looking to the 
future for a man only a little lower than the angels, and a form 
of society only a little less seraphic than heaven. The exhaus- 
tion of the nervous system, through exclusive devotion to mental 
occupation under intense competition; the worrying of business 
men, under similar competition by over-anxiety and care; the phys- 
ical decline of the rich, through pleasure-seeking and dissipation; 
the dwarfing and weakening of classes of operatives in unhealthy 
and routine occupations; the tendency of monopoly and commer- 
cial revulsions to obliterate the sturdy, independent yeoman class; 
the tendency of refined education to stanch the resources of 
prolificacy; — all these contribute to throw the function of multi- 
plying and filling the earth very largely upon inferior strains of 
mankind, and render it logically unsafe to trust in "the coming 
millennium." It is just as likely that the coming man, who is 
to spring up under the forces now controling the prolificacy of 
peoples, will be personally inferior, as that he will be superior, 
to the man of to-day. 

Note. — Some who have been in the habit of contemplating education as a 
sort of all-potent saviour, may be grieved to find its limitations brought into the 
foreground, as in this and the preceding chapters; but is it not better to look 
these limitations squarely in the face, in order to determine the real capabilities 
of the educational forces, and give them their most efficient direction? 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

THE MARRIAGE RELATION. 

Section 213. — The love of the sexes for each other has been 
called the master passion. It is not merely that it carries its 
ends by vigorous self-assertion ; it throws a glamour over the 
passions, and largely molds their character and directs their 
action. The half of civilized peoples give probably ninety per 
cent, of all their energies, directly or indirectly, to this passion 
and its concomitants ; and the other half are driven by it as 
with the lash of a tyrant. Men and women are compelled to 
acknowledge its supremacy, whether they will or no. It governs 
with seductive smiles and punishes with remorseless torture. 

"Ah, tell me what is this which men call love ? 
The sweetest pleasure and severest pain." 

When all goes well with this passion and its belongings, the 
whole passional nature becomes an instrument of music and 
harmony. When it goes ill with it, the emotional nature suffers 
revulsion, and there is no longer music but harsh discord. There 
is no better illustration than this of the dual character of pas- 
sion : At one pole it is exquisite happiness, at the other pole it 
is equally exquisite misery; and the one is in a sense the measure 
of the other. 

Such is the character of the passion which serves as the basis 
of marriage, and marriage it is which serves as the basis of 
society. The relation of the sexes has at different times and 
places taken every possible form we are able to conceive of. 
These different forms of the sexual status have been determined 
by the condition of the peoples and their relations to one 
another. But whatever the form, it has always been an example 



Sec. 2I4.~\ CONJUGAL FITNESS IN PRIMITIVE TYPES. 42 1 

of motion in the direction of least resistance, or greatest attrac- 
tion. 

Among the most primitive peoples the relation of the sexes 
seems to be promiscuous, very much like that of gregarious 
animals, among which the relation is determined by impulse with- 
out sentiment. All the men are after a fashion the husbands of 
all the women ; and all the women are the wives of all the men. 
There has been no assorting and little orderly exclusion. In 
some societies the women have several husbands with a limit ; 
and the men have several wives, limited in like manner. The 
assorting and excluding processes have begun. With regard 
even to monogamy, its laws and obligation are not uniform 
in countries where it prevails, being far more exclusive and 
binding in some than in others. But it is not necessary to 
go into details. All this has been largely treated of by Lub- 
bock, Tylor, McLennan, Spencer, Morgan, and others. What 
the inquiry here especially concerns is the hope of getting rid of 
the discords of marriage in the course of human progress. 

Section 214. — There is an individual sameness among prim- 
itive peoples very much in contrast with the diversity among 
civilized races. Nor are there the same marked differences 
between the sexes. The men are very much all alike and the 
women quite alike, with less contrast between the two than pre- 
vails among higher peoples. Any man may unite in marriage 
with any woman without danger of incompatibility; for if any 
such union is harmonious and happy, any other would have 
been equally so, at least so far as concerns the permanent rela- 
tions of temper. Ill-assorted marriages would be quite unknown 
among such peoples, or if they should occur, their divergence 
from the even tenor of general conjugal fitness, would be slight. 
It is true that the relations of such people to one another, 
whether in marriage or in social relations, may be brutal enough; 
but the point to be noted is, that the difference between the 
most happy and the least happy in the relations of sex cannot 
be great. This is, indeed, a corollary from the general uni- 
formity of temperament and mental cast, the little divergence of 



422 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. \Chdp. XXXIII. 

mental taste, the absence of a diversified education, and the 
actual simplicity of life among the uncivilized. 

With progress in civilization all this gradually changes. Peo- 
ples mix and the types diverge. The variety of temperament 
and mental cast becomes almost infinite among people in occu- 
pancy of the same territory. Not only individuals, but the sexes, 
become more and more unlike. " Now, as we go up in the ani- 
mal scale, we find, that such differentiation has indeed taken 
place, and that progressively. The sexual differences — that is, 
the differences between male and female individuals of the same 
species — become greater and greater as we rise in the scale. 
They are also greater, we believe, in the higher as compared 
with the lower races of man, and in the cultivated classes as 
compared with the uncultivated classes." — (Prof. J. LeConte, 
Popular Science Monthly, December, 1879.) Through the mix- 
ing of types and temperaments, and the complication of educa- 
tional influences, there arises a veritable maze of conditions 
under which social attractions and repulsions must act. The 
basis and scope of the affections are also greatly enlarged. Sen- 
timent has become developed, with a multiplication of mental 
qualities as the diversified sources of pleasure made to flow by 
fitting response. Friendships are warmer and loves more ardent 
than among primitive peoples. But this basis of gain is at the 
same time the basis of loss. If friendship and love may afford 
more happiness, they may also by inversion or defeat generate 
more pain. Not only is this inversion or defeat attended with 
greater misery, but it is more likely to take place among peoples 
of diversified susceptibility, than among those of simpler consti- 
tutional mold. Every point of character that attracts may by 
inversion repel ; the same key may add to the harmony or pro- 
duce a discord. The more points there are in character, the 
more complicated is the emotional instrument; the finer the 
concord when it works in harmony, the greater the discord when 
not rightly played upon, and the greater the danger of striking 
the wrong keys. 



Sec. 215.] DIVERSE CONDITIONS. 423 

"If well accorded, the connubial state 
From all its strings speaks perfect harmony; 
If ill, at home, abroad the harsh notes jar, 
And with rude discord wound the ear of peace." 

— [Orestes, in Euripides. 

It is plain from such considerations that, with the progress of 
civilization, the capabilities of affectional discordance keep pace 
with the capabilities of affectional concordance. Marriage 
becomes an institution which may give greater joy, or which 
may inflict deeper misery. We might rest the matter here on 
general considerations alone, but owing to the large space which 
marriage fills in life, it is but proper to look at the subject more 
in detail. 

Section 215. — The differences of social position interpose an 
arbitrary obstacle to the natural action of conjugal affinities. It 
is true that the educational influence of social life goes to mold 
the same class into the same social type; but if compatibilities 
exist across the class-lines, the prejudices of class oppose their 
meeting in recognized legitimacy; and then there is no choice 
except between illegitimacy and deprivation. 

Another obstacle in the way, more natural and inevitable, is 
that with increasing complication of character, the conditions of 
a conjugal love may obtain where the conditions of friendship 
do not. This is no doubt a prevalent state of things in modern 
life. It is to be presumed that conjugal love is largely deter- 
mined by the fitness of relations for reproduction; and when great 
diversity exists in the constitution of individuals, there is greater 
reproductive compatibility between some than between others. 
This has reference both to mind and body. Extremes of some 
kinds may be fitting for the physical ends of marriage, and just 
the reverse for friendship. It may be a function of the conju- 
gal instinct to discern the fitting for conjugal relations, when in 
the natural course of things love follows, and marriage. But 
when the basis of a lasting friendship is absent, incompatibilities 
of temper and taste are developed in the close proximity of mar- 
ried life. For these causes of discord — the merely conjugal at- 
tracting and the want of friendship repelling — there appears to 



424 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. [Chap. XXXIII. 

be no help under existing conditions ; at least, so far they have 
not been helped ; and they are rapidly on the increase with the 
facilities for diversity of culture. Intelligence should of course 
play the part of guarding against unions without the element of 
a life-long friendship in them; yet this very same intelligence is 
contributing to the possibilities of conjugal discordance by mul- 
tiplying the points on which differences and repulsion may arise. 
This is to be observed in the many unfortunate marriages of liter- 
ary and other intellectual people. If they secure in connubial 
relations intellectual equality and companionship, there is apt 
to be no issue, in which case marriage fails of its end. It is a 
matter of common remark, that the distinctively intellectual 
marry the unintellectual, and fail completely of companionship, 
and hence the unhappiness of so many of this class in their mar- 
riage relations. 

The organic basis of these discordances appears to be great- 
est in the centers of civilization, greater in the cities than in the 
country. Even physical divergence between the sexes is 
increased by the active forces of civilization. While the forms 
of the two sexes among savages are more alike than among 
civilized people, they are also more alike among the "lower 
classes " in civilized countries than among the cultured and 
well-to-do (Pruner Bey). That is, the head and pelvis 
approach more nearly to the masculine type. While the aver- 
age difference in cranial capacity between men and women in 
the whole of France is one hundred and fifty cubic centimetres, 
it is two hundred and twenty-one cubic centimetres in Paris 
alone (Broca). Delauney adds: "The biological considera- 
tions we have adduced explain to us why the two sexes tend to 
diverge from each other as we proceed from the lower to the 
higher classes. Both sexes among peasants and working people 
having nearly the same moral and intellectual faculties, they 
can sympathize with each other, and have no reason for becom- 
ing estranged. It is different among the intelligent classes, 
where the two sexes, in consequence of the increasing pre- 
eminence of man, not having the same ideas, the same senti- 



Sec. 2l6.] AN INSTANCE OF CORRELATION. 425 

ments, nor the same tastes, cannot understand each other, and 
they form separate coteries. Moralists have long taken notice 
of the separation, which is of force in the family and in the 
meetings of men and women, and which seems to be increas- 
ing from year to year."— (Popular Science Monthly, December, 
1881.) 

Section 216. — Reproduction requires physical adaptation. 
In a large headed race, failure in parturition would necessarily 
elminate all with inadequate capacity of the pelvic region. And 
this would be the case whatever the cause of great size of brain. 
The Eskimo and Lapps have large heads as well as the Teutons, 
and the pelvic region is also large. But the large pelvis and its 
corresponding function appropriate a larger share of the vital 
energies, leaving less for other parts and functions. Develop- 
ment with the necessary nutrition takes the direction which 
active demand requires, and if the infant's head be large, the 
demand for a correspondingly large pelvis is absolute. Less 
supply of nutrition and less scope of activity would remain for 
the female brain. Under the influences of civilization the brain 
of woman appears to be losing in size, — not only relatively to 
man's, but absolutely. "Very curiously, the cranial capacity of 
the prehistoric women was greater than that of the women of 
to-day." — (Delauney). This is the result of the investigations of 
Broca, Le Bon, and Zametti. But while this is the case, the 
brain of the civilized man is much larger than the brain of the 
savage man, having increased in size under the growth of civili- 
zation while woman's has diminished, thus rendering the disparity 
between them very great, and affecting their dispositions and 
tastes in a corresponding degree. 

MM. Broca and Le Bon refer the diminution of woman's 
head to the small part she takes in the work of civilization. 
This is probably a case of mistaking effect for cause. Her 
activity is of a much more diversified character than the activity 
of savage women, and her brain is doubtless of a much finer 
quality though it be smaller. It is smaller mainly, no doubt, 
because man's brain is larger. Her brain is not only smaller 



426 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. [Chap. XXXIII. 

than it is among more primitive peoples, not only smaller than 
man's, but smaller in proportion to her body. While her body 
is but eight per cent, smaller than man's, her brain is ten per 
cent, smaller than his. — (Dr. A. Hughes Bennett, P. S. Mo., 
Feb., 1880). The facts point to a case of correlation in develop- 
ment, of physiological and anatomical adjustment by means of 
sexual selection, in which the structure is adapted to relativity of 
function and the corresponding distribution of energy — the 
large head of the male fetus necessitating development of the 
pelvic region, and this in turn necessitating the diminution of 
the cerebral structure in woman. This is a matter which can- 
not be decided on the basis of sentimentalism ; it must be 
brought to the solid ground of fact. And so far as the facts 
enable us to understand it at present, it points to growing incon- 
gruity in the mental relations of men and women. If it be true 
that, under the necessities of sexual adjustment to the increase 
of man's brain, woman's brain is diminishing, or even remaining 
the same, or not increasing in size as rapidly as his, then does it 
follow quite conclusively, that this particular form of evolution is 
increasing the points on which intellectual companionship 
between men and women, husbands and wives, cannot find 
place. 

Among the great mass of civilized people, sociability between 
the sexes is mainly emotional and frivolous. To this there is 
only a small percentage of exceptions. We confess that even now 
with his larger head, the average man is not so many-sided in 
his social and intellectual tastes and cravings, but that he is 
easily met and satisfied. It is also true that there is exquisite 
sympathy and communion between men and women in which soul 
very fully and honestly speaks to soul. True friendships obtain 
between the sexes; but the point I wish to make is that the 
mere test of sex applied to an individual for determining the 
bent of character is not an accurate one. We may regard phys- 
ical sex as necessarily incisive and distinct ; but the sexual char- 
acteristics of mind, and the secondary sexual characteristics of 
the body, show no such definite outline of distinctness. In 



SeC. 2l6.] SEX IN TYPES OF MIND. 427 

some instances women have larger heads, broader shoulders, 
and narrower pelvis than is normal for the sex, thus approach- 
ing the masculine form. There are all grades of masculinity in 
mind, from the distinctively masculine to that which is barely 
masculine, or mainly feminine ; there are likewise all grades of 
the feminine qualities of character. There is a prevailing type of 
mind in men which is of course known as masculine; there is a 
prevailing type in women which is known as feminine ; but our 
point is, that, while physical sex is distinct, the mental charac- 
teristics of each run together and overlap with an indistinctness 
of outline which often renders it difficult to determine whether 
in a given case the mind is more of the masculine or feminine 
type. A considerable part, no doubt, of those ladies who aspire 
to the usual masculine course of education and sphere of life, and 
who acquit themselves creditably in the same, have a marked 
degree of the masculine in their mental constitution. Such are 
not so apt to marry as the average girl, nor to have families when 
they do marry. They are not apt to choose intellectual men of 
positive character for husbands, and consequently, if they have 
children, are not likely to transmit their own mental peculiarities 
unimpaired. But whatever tends to eliminate these sexual inter- 
mediates, they will no doubt always obtain, in the future as in 
the present, or even more so, for they seem to be a product of 
civilized conditions; but their existence does not invalidate the 
obvious premise of sexual distinctness in mind, which is co-ordi- 
nate with the difference in volume between the male and female 
brain. And if this difference has not already reached its acme, 
but is becoming greater, there is a mental basis for the growing 
disparity between the sexes, and consequent increase of points 
on which the responses of companionship cannot be made. 

The existence of incompatibility of temper along with repro- 
ductive compatibility is distinctively a phenomenon of civiliza- 
tion, and comes with the great diversity and contrast and conse- 
quent extremes which the forces of history have developed in indi- 
vidual character. These contrasts have led to, and are ever lead- 
ing to, the union of persons of unlike character, even sometimes 



428 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. \Chap. XXXIII. 

to the union of an angel with a brute. We do not insist on the 
illustrative value of such extreme cases; but even when the 
incompatibility is not so great, it is a necessary consequence that 
the close union of marriage usually multiplies the occasions of 
discord; and married pairs cease to be friendly, who, if they had 
never married, would never have been unfriendly. I aim in this 
to state simply a current fact, and no more. The close ; relations 
of married life give opportunity for the incompatible to torture 
each other in manifold and exquisite ways, often without relief — 
so intractable is human nature under the feeling or fancy of 
being wronged. Plutarch speaks of the little differences between 
man and wife which breed aversion; and yet in Greece there 
was no pretension to companionship between husband and wife. 
It seems to be the fatality of certain temperaments allied in 
marriage constantly to "misunderstand" each other. There is 
an infinity of divergences in taste and temper, for whose liabil- 
ity to discordance there seems to be no efficient remedy. 

There are stern moralists who have no sympathy for such as 
are conjugally unhappy, but only censure, since they hold that 
mutual adaptation in marriage is purely a voluntary matter. It 
is true that the obtrusion of infelicities on public attention is a 
thing to be deprecated; while it is equally true that the will 
intelligently directed may do much to secure conjugal sympathy 
and co-operation, but yet more to endure with resignation the 
absence of them; but the will has its limits, with little power to 
overcome those little intractabilities of temper which all experi- 
ence proves to be deeply imbedded in human nature. But 
even in cases where, under self-control, there is no open bicker- 
ing, there may be such a want of sympathy in taste and turn as 
to make life lonesome and dissatisfied. With peace without, 
there may be an "aching void" within, which, negative though it 
be, gives positive testimony to the development of the unfitting 
along with the progress of civilization. Only among couples in 
the higher planes of society is there unmet craving for sympathy 
in a multiplicity of tastes, craving for appreciation in the con- 
sciousness of worthful aspiration, craving for encouragement and 



Sec. 21/.] CONFLICTING VIEWS OF MARRIAGE. 429 

support in the endeavor which may rise above the beaten paths 
of mediocrity; and it is futile and foolish to expect to remedy, 
by a battle with fate, what properly admits only of calm and 
decent resignation. 

Section 217. — There are three general methods of looking 
at the marriage relation : First, the business method, as mar- 
riage for property and family considerations; secondly, the 
deliberative method, as marriage for friendship and companion- 
ship; thirdly, the sentimental method, as marriage for love. 
The morality of the relation is very different as it is looked at 
from these different points of view. According to the first, the 
legality of the relation constitutes the essence of its morality. 
The marriage relation is pure if .legally sanctioned, although the 
parties bound by it have neither love nor friendship for each 
other. This is the legal view of purity in marriage; and it is 
so necessarily, since the legal tribunals have neither power nor 
right to go behind the forms • of law. The second view could 
not regard the legal form as a sufficient warrant for the purity of 
the relation in the absence of mutual confidence and compan- 
ionship. The third theoretically regards legal forms as wholly 
without value to sanctify the relation which love only can sanc- 
tify. According to this view, in its extreme form, affection alone 
justifies the union, and when the affection ceases, the marriage 
is at an end. This view, however, as exacting as it is, is withal 
very indefinite, since the term love is generic rather than 
specific, and love between the sexes is a compound feeling 
admitting of infinite variations, as one ingredient or another 
enters into it in larger or smaller proportions. It is also indefi- 
nite, owing to the part which interest and the will-power may 
play, or not play, in giving direction to the affections. Mrs. 
Favicett (in Nineteenth Century) says: "I can only speak for 
myself, but 1 believe I represent the vast majority of women who 
have worked in this movement, when I say that I believe that the 
emotional element in the marriage contract is of overwhelming 
importance; and that anything which puts forward the commercial 
view of marriage and sinks the spiritual and emotional view is 



43© THE MARRIAGE RELATION. \Chap. XXXIII. 

degrading both to men and women." Very true; but so promi- 
nent is the commercial element as the basis and measure of posi- 
tion in society that it has a magical power in determining love. 
As much as women profess to " marry for love," they usually pass 
judgment on one another's luck in marriage by its commercial 
element. And, however much stress is laid on the affection and 
the affinities of the relation, as elements which alone warrant its 
purity; yet it is, at the same time, regarded as impure if not 
formed in accordance with the legal requirements. This is 
brought out very distinctly in Jane Eyre's personal solution of 
the problem. 

These different views are implicated with a good deal of 
essential contradiction, and involve the issues on which a long- 
continued battle will probably yet be fought. The question is not 
altogether how to get rid of the evils connected with marriage, 
taking it for granted that marriage is a definite and fixed thing; 
but the question is really turning upon what constitutes marriage. 
Society recognizes as the only legitimate object of marriage, the 
orderly continuation of the species. Healthy and well-organized 
children, properly disciplined for their places in life, seem fully 
to answer the end and aim of marriage, so far as society has 
anything to do with it. But this form of achievement requires 
several conditions not fully guaranteed by the legal conception of 
purity in marriage: First, physical and psychological adaptation 
on the part of the parents for reproduction; secondly, companion- 
ship as the necessary basis of co-operation in the proper educa- 
tion of their children ; and thirdly, a sufficiency of income for 
family needs. 

An incongruity here is that, while society may be exacting as 
to the form of marriage, and is deeply interested in the results 
of the marriage, it has no voice in the matters of fitness and 
companionship which are the chief agencies in shaping said 
results. Another incongruity is the natural and fundamental 
difficulty of securing the union of companionship and reproduc- 
tive affinity in the same relation. When parents are quite unlike 
in physical and mental characteristics, their children, if inter- 



Sec. 2l8.1 MORALITY AND PHYSIOLOGY IN CONFLICT. 43 1 

mediate, are like neither. The offspring may be up to the 
required standard of physical and mental symmetry, but must, 
nevertheless, suffer from the perversion and misdirection of home 
influences. The want of mutual good understanding between 
parents, not only prevents the reinforcement of each other's 
influence on their children, but actually renders it antagonistic 
and discordant, to the lasting detriment of those for whose right 
education they are chiefly responsible. This is one of the sad- 
dest things in modern life, and far more frequent than it appears 
to be, from the discretion with which it is properly concealed 
from public view, seldom appearing but in the unavoidable 
results. Sad as this is, it is an incidental product of mental and 
social development, wholly unknown in primitive life. 

Section 218. — There is a form in which culture may compli- 
cate the difficulties of social life. Along with the strengthening 
of the spiritual and artistic faculties is strengthened the repug- 
nance to whatever is merely animal in its nature. The animal 
and spiritual tendencies in man may be affirmed to be directly 
opposite in character. The spiritual or refined is upward and 
expansive in its tendencies ; the animal is downward and con- 
centrative. This was the character of the animal in man, when 
he had little in his nature of the artistic and refined ; it is the 
character of the animal in man still, when he has become a 
highly intellectual and cultured being. The animal instinct may 
demand what revolts the higher instincts ; and these instincts 
may enforce a system of repression against the animal in viola- 
tion of its healthy and normal action. Hence, there is current 
a phenomenon which pertains solely to the higher forms of social 
existence. It is the conflict of requirement between morality 
and physiology concerning quite a large class of invalids. 
Morality rigidly exacts what physiology condemns ; and the 
former admits of no compromise. Where marriage fails, there 
must in honor be celibacy ; and perpetual celibacy is a violation 
of organic law ; but the physician must recognize the supremacy 
of the moral precepts which society enforces. 

Sex is a physical function which has its physical laws. Life- 



43 2 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. \_Chap. XXXIII. 

long celibacy involves a violation of these laws, which is often 
attended with unhealthy action and physical and mental pain. 
But such celibacy is compulsory with very many, and made so 
by the moral system on which society is based, and without 
which order in society could not exist. The physical law is 
ovetridden by the socio-moral law. Or, it may be put in this 
way : The performance of every function in accordance with 
its laws is a moral requirement. The non-performance, there- 
fore, is a breach of morality on that plane in which the function 
lies; and yet, in society in certain fields of action, such per- 
formance of function under conditions possible to the party, 
would be the hight of immorality. The exercise of the maternal 
function is an obligation demanded by its laws, but morality for- 
bids such exercise of function except on terms with which very 
many are unable to comply. Thus, morality in the physio- 
logical sphere and morality in the sociological sphere may fall 
into direct antagonism. This is a clear case in which one law 
is crossed or thwarted by another law, as Paley instances in a 
general way. And there is no redress for the outrage done to 
the lower law. Judgment is given against it in the highest 
known court, and no appeal can be granted. What is fatal is 
that the lower or physical law cannot be changed in the way of 
adaptation. Celibacy cannot perpetuate itself by natural selec- 
tion, or by any other possible process. By its nature celibacy 
has no part either in inheritance or in transmission. Every 
ancestor of every person living fulfilled the function in question, 
and this tendency to fulfillment is one of the organic properties 
transmitted to offspring. It is one which cannot fall off or 
abate, for those in whom it is strong more surely fulfill it and 
transmit it. No matter how imperious the self-control, the ten- 
dency still exists, and its perpetual suppression is a sacrifice made 
by the individual, on the basis of conflict in the constitution of 
things, to the supremacy of a higher law. 

Connected with the refinement and elevation of taste is the 
great strength of the sexual impulse. It is greater among civil- 
ized than among uncivilized peoples. This is no doubt a case 



Sec. 2ig.] prostitution. 433 

of natural selection. With the development of civilized condi- 
tions, the care of a family becomes more of a burthen in which 
the seeking of pleasures must yield to the discharge of duties, 
and many would shrink from it if not impelled by an irresistible 
impulse which sets the fashion. With this greater strength of 
sexual attraction among civilized people, there is this to be 
noted, that, with enough there is necessarily too much. This is 
nature's way of working, because she works by general laws, and 
the paradox could only be escaped by special interference. The 
impulse becomes active before the physical system is mature, 
when its gratification would be an improper thing. And then at 
maturity and under the sanctions of marriage, its surplusage is 
very great. And still another incongruity is to be noted. Before 
marriage there is the necessary effort of constraint and pain of 
deprivation ; after marriage the restraint reacts into license by a 
natural law, and the longing of deprivation is followed only too 
generally by the lassitude of satiety. A cloak of sacredness is 
thrown over marriage, and it is well; but marriage is not a sure 
guaranty of the virtue that shuns excess. 

Section 219. — No doubt, all things considered in the history 
of civilization and the play of its current forces, the exclusive 
union of one man with one woman is the best possible form of 
the relation in the highest form of society of which we yet know 
anything. Yet it appears that this exclusive form of marriage 
cannot be had without necessitating prostitution in its regular 
and irregular forms. It prevails alarmingly in the centres of 
civilization, — in the very shadows of the great churches and 
schools, where civilization is most concentrated. It accom- 
panies civilization and monogamy everywhere; it has struck its 
roots down deep into the civilized structure, and it persistently 
defies every effort to exterminate it, or even to palliate it. 
Indeed, it is held to be a sort of safety valve for the social sys- 
tem, without which the integrity of society would be in perpetual 
danger. This assumes that if it were not for legalized and sys- 
tematic prostitution, the police could hardly be made sufficiently 
omnipresent in certain localities to afford the needed protection. 



434 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. \_Chap. XXXIII. 

It thus comes about that "the supreme type of vice" is at the 
same time "the most efficient guardian of virtue." — (Lecky). 
Harlotry is recognized very early in Jewish history. Solon is 
reported to have established brothels in Athens, for the protec- 
tion of virtuous women. Cities like Venice, Naples, and Amster- 
dam, when in the hight of their commercial prosperity, seem to 
have encouraged rather than repressed this vice. Venice even 
imported courtezans from foreign ports. And in modern times, 
by municipal action which speaks louder than words, systematic 
prostitution seems to be regarded as necessary to the orderly 
maintenance of civilized society, or at least, as an irrepressible 
part of such society. Mandeville observes : "From what has 
been said, it is manifest that there is a necessity of sacrificing 
one part of womankind to preserve the other, and prevent a 
filthiness of a more heinous nature. From whence I think I 
may justly conclude (what was the seeming paradox I went about 
to prove) that chastity may be supported by incontinence, and 
the best of virtues want the assistance of the worst of vices." 
Society itself may contribute to this result .by a sort of automatic 
action, as exquisitely shown on philosophical grounds by Dr. 
Woolsey, who only recognizes the legal as the sanctifying element 
of marriage, and maintains that divorce should only be granted 
on scriptural grounds. He believes that wives thus offending and 
divorced should not be permitted to marry again, even if the 
inhibition should confirm them in sin: "The question recurs 
whether it is worth while to save them at the expense of public 
virtue. Is it not better for society that such a woman lose her 
ordinary right by way of penalty — -even as a citizen sometimes 
loses his right of office or of suffrage by fighting a duel, or by 
bribery — than that the honorable state of the matron be degraded 
by her participation in its privileges." — (Essay on Divorce). In 
this way, society, in the defense of matronly purity, may legally 
and formally occasion harlotry; and the justification therefor 
is clearly the recognized fact that the devil is bound to have 
a share any way, and that this method would put him off with 
the least. 



Sec. 220.] SUPPRESSION OF MATERNITY. 435 

It is not to be set down in disparagement of monogamy that 
prostitution is more conspicuous under it than under polygamy, 
if, indeed, such be the fact. It may still prevail in polygamy, 
only in a different form, with a far less average of what is desir- 
able in the relations of men and women. It is not a question 
of getting rid of evils, but of choosing that form which is 
attended with the least aggregate of human degradation and 
misery. Even if acknowledged prostitution be more distinc- 
tively bound up with monogamy, still may the advantages of this 
form of marriage be on the whole so great as to compensate 
society in general for the curse of prostitution ; and this appears 
to be the prevailing instinct concerning it, judging by the com- 
placence with which the civil and religious authorities regard the 
systematic degradation to pariahs of a part of womankind. It 
is surely a reflection to humble human pride, that the dreary, 
hopeless life thus led, is a necessary concomitant, if not indeed 
a necessary condition, of the highest known practical form of the 
marriage relation. 

Section 220. — Another wrong, if not evil, is indissolubly 
bound up with the necessary exclusiveness of monogamic mar- 
riage. Reference is made to the suppression of the maternal 
function by the inexorable decree of society for all women, how- 
ever well qualified for its discharge, except within the pale of 
wedlock. This condition many cannot comply with in the lot- 
tery of marriage, without debasing themselves in unequal union ; 
and in localities where women are greatly in the majority, as in 
most old countries, the deprivation must fall absolutely on the 
number in excess, embracing some of the most worthy. It is 
her fitness for the fulfilling of this function that makes woman 
specifically what she is, and although it is necessary for many to 
set their houses in order to go through life without fulfilling it, 
such ordering is suggestively asexual. So manifest is the "inten- 
tion of nature," so inevitable are the workings of woman's emo- 
tional nature trained around this function as its centre, that there 
is no mistaking its importance in her being. An able woman, 
speaking cf the suppression of women's maternal instincts, says 



43 6 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. [Chap. XXXIII. 

that they are deprived of that for which " every fibre of their 
physical and moral being is yearning." — (Mrs. Mary Putnam- 
Jacobi). This injustice-has been the occasion of a good deal of 
sentimental rant against the despotism of society, and the cruelty 
of woman to woman, as if every form of injustice in the world 
could be righted. But in the social system the laws are just as 
necessary and imperious as elsewhere. There are social neces- 
sities involving social wrongs, which are just as inexorable as 
certain physical necessities which involve physical violence. To 
permit a woman outside of wedlock to become a mother with 
approval, or even with toleration, because it is her natural right, 
would be to unsettle the basis on which monogamy rests. This 
kind of latitude, in deference to a natural right, could only be 
allowed with safety, through a total revolution in human nature. 
The natural right of maternity in a certain class is crushed like a 
fragile shell under the weight of what society everywhere regards 
a higher law. The social instincts strike straight to the mark, 
that the good to be gained by such concession to natural right, 
would be greatly overbalanced, in the end, by the evil which 
would grow out of it. That is, the matter resolves itself into 
a choice of evils, one class or other of which is necessary and 
inevitable ; and society chooses what it believes, or more prop- 
erly feels, to be the least 

In an institution like marriage, which is so delicate a poise 
between conflicting impulses, it becomes the instinctive solici- 
tude of society to fix it in the very grain of the moral constitu- 
tion by the weightiest sanctions of conventionality and education; 
and no exceptions can be permitted. And in this, society is no 
doubt unequivocally right; but no matter whether right or wrong 
in this regard, its course is determined by the nature of the 
case, and is as inevitable as a decree of fate. Given the raono- 
gamic family as the corner stone of the social structure, and 
there is no redress for this form of injustice ; and we must not 
forget that it pertains to the highest social system of which we 
have any historical or practical knowledge. 



Sec. 221.'] NECESSARY ORIGIN OF MONOGAMY. 437 

Section 221. — How is it that marriage has come to crystallize 
into the monogamic form with its concomitants of good and 
evil? By the conjugal instinct threading its way among resist- 
ing forces to find the track of least resistance. It is the play of 
the counter forces affecting the relation that holds marriage pre- 
cisely where it is. The sexual impulse, the desire for offspring, 
the sense of possession which arises from them, the physical 
limitations of both the sexual impulse and the provision for 
children defining the boundaries of sexual privilege, the histor- 
ical antecedents of civilized peoples, and the conditions of exist- 
ing social life, may be named as a somewhat vague indication of 
the forces which, by their interaction, have adjusted marriage into 
its present form. It is a case of natural selection. The mono- 
gamic peoples held better together; and whether due to monog- 
amy or not, they were stronger in the conflicts of races and 
nations, and in this way came to be the leading and dominant 
peoples of the earth. Given the physical conditions of modern 
civilization and the character which civilized peoples have 
acquired through historical development, and monogamy is one 
of the most natural of institutions. What, then, is the remedy 
for the evils which accompany it? There is no remedy. They 
are part of the system, irrevocably bound up with it, and could 
only be extinguished by revolutionizing the system, and this 
could only be done through revolution in human nature and its 
environment. I repeat, there is no remedy. Education and 
philosophy may refine the sensibilities and teach resignation, but 
they can do little more. The great difficulty lies in this, that 
while we adopt measures for individual relief, we are doing what 
will reduce the tonicity of social life in general and lower the 
standard of moral heroism, without which no people can be 
great. The apparent arbitrariness of the marriage bond has 
been inveighed against as that which stands in the way of rem- 
edying mistakes here as elsewhere. But the assumption here is 
at fault. There is a difference in the spheres of human life in 
which blunders may be made; but wherever made, the fitting 
penalty is quite sure to follow. And in the matter of marriage, 
20 



43 8 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. \Chap. XXXI II. 

experience could not be trusted to teach a great deal ; second, 
third, and fourth marriages are not as likely to be. happy as the 
first. And in this weighty affair of life, one generation appears 
to learn nothing of another. 

Section 222. — A class of reformers suppose that harmony 
and right can be secured in the affectional sphere by means of 
freedom. On general principles, "freedom" is accepted as the 
panacea for all the ills which are in any way bound up with des_ 
potism. Within limits, freedom is a very desirable thing, but it 
has limits which must be scrupulously observed, because free- 
dom has reference only to motion under resistance, and diver- 
gence to either side fetches up against obstructions, with result- 
ing violence, discord, and pain. So-called freedom would only 
escape the usual besetments by meeting with others equally for- 
midable. Take down the barriers which social opinion now inter- 
poses, as unjust and tyrannical as these barriers often are in their 
effects, and others equally tyrannical must be established, or dis- 
cord and deprivation would arise even worse than any which 
now exist. This is proved by the experiments in freedom which 
have nominally succeeded, as well as by those which have 
speedily failed. The Perfectionists have only succeeded in mak- 
ing a change without securing freedom, since the new order is 
maintained only by exclusion from "the world" under a spirit- 
ual despotism made operative through open criticism, which 
coerces the life of the people. [Since this was written, the 
Oneida Community has abandoned complex marriage, and 
adopted marriage and celibacy as they prevail in the Christian 
world at large.] 

Hardly any word is so vague as that of freedom; and its 
application to the affectional sphere is very limited. If love 
alone sanctifies the conjugal relation, who shall decide on the 
right measure and mixture of this feeling, so varied as it is in 
the elements of sentiment and passion which compose it? "The 
parties concerned." Very well; but they may to-morrow reverse 
the decision of to-day; and they are not isolated, self-sovereign 
creatures, but are bound up with others in the same society, 



Sec. 222.'] WISDOM IN LOVE. 439 

which is compelled in behalf of its own integrity to make note 
of their example and their relations to others. And then there 
are two of them; and though they agree to-day, they may 
differ to-morrow, one to maintain the union, the other to sever 
it. Which decision shall prevail ? Unlike a temporary co-part- 
nership, the nature of the conjugal relation is so bound up with 
engrossing affection and permanence in results, that it does not 
admit of any approach to caprice or vacillation, and society pro- 
vides against it, by recognizing the business and practical side 
of marriage. "But the cold and rigid ruling of society causes 
suffering." Doubtless ; but it is the only way to prevent still 
greater suffering. In matters of the heart, the idea of the indi- 
vidual being legitimately sovereign to have his own way at his 
own cost, is absurd. Conjugal separation at the instance of but 
one of the parties cannot take place at his or her own cost, 
any more than the union can be maintained by one of the 
parties at his or her own cost, when the other wishes it broken. 
There is despotism on either horn of the dilemma, and the 
precious bit of freedom there is in it, is in deciding which shall 
be taken. 

Loving freely according to wisdom is common ground on 
which all meet; but there is a very great difference of opinion 
as to what constitutes the wisdom thus summoned to limit free- 
dom. It is upon this the entire question turns. We believe 
that the system which has grown up out of experience is prac- 
tically the wisest. This may change and does change, but 
rarely by conscious intention. Changes in the system which 
governs the affectional relations come about gradually, in conse- 
quence of changes in the conditions which necessitate readjust- 
ment. With the progress of civilizations change is almost 
sure to take place in the conjugal relations. And the slight 
shades of difference in the civilizations of different nationali- 
ties are accompanied with shades of difference in the affectional 
relation of the sexes. Marriage is not just the same as conven- 
tionally determined in Italy, France, England, and America. 
The social status of the maid before marriage, and that of the wife 



440 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. \Chap. XXX II L 

after marriage, vary greatly. The species monogamy has dif- 
ferentiated into distinct varieties. Every people must, from the 
nature of the case, decide on the wisdom of the relation for 
itself; and it will do it by instinct growing out of practice rather 
than by discursive methods. All the changes which the relation 
of the sexes has undergone, have come through experience; and 
whatever the changes of the future, they must pass this ordeal. 
Theory will not affect it; society, whether in the sphere of free- 
dom or morals, admits of nothing absolute. Wisdom consists 
simply in finding the most peaceful balancing of the discordant 
or opposing forces in the sphere of passion and interest. Thus 
far the term freedom applies, but no farther. As well talk of 
the freedom of the planets to move in their orbits as to talk of 
freedom of the affections in actual life. The planet might like 
to fly off into space, because it would be so nice to abandon 
the old commonplace orbit and travel into new celestial regions, 
but the attraction of gravitation will not permit it. Passions 
which readily invest themselves with the seeming of sentimental 
sanctity, may want to set at defiance the conventionalities of 
sexual regulation, but they are curbed in lawlessness by the 
co-operative action of stronger social forces. But however high 
and holy the aims which are pursued in the name of affectional 
freedom, they must prove to be abortions, since despotism is 
every whit as true of the affections as freedom; and no passion 
or sentiment can be understood by looking only at one side of 
it, when it has two sides as unlike as the terms of any antithesis. 
Life is but the picking of one's way through the tangled mazes 
of contradiction. How almost every act of life, except the mer- 
est commonplace and routine, involves the balancing of consid- 
erations ! Wisdom consists in finding the line, however devious 
or however straight and narrow, of least conflict with the inevit- 
able. For, whoever loses this line fetches up against some 
obstruction — he literally bumps his head and suffers for his folly. 
The limitations so hedge in conduct on every side that penalty 
always follows excess of momentum in any direction. Whenever 
we have found out what wisdom requires, in order to make the 



SeC. 222.] PERFECT FREEDOM A DREAM. 44I 

most of life for all, we have found out precisely what morality is, 
and vice versa; and therein is accurately defined the range and 
sweep of social freedom. Morality itself, as we have seen 
(Chapter XII.), is but the resultant of conflicting social forces. 

We often allow ourselves to be deluded with specious names. 
The doctrine of affectional freedom would never be pressed as a 
remedy for the evils associated with marriage, but for the 
glamour of theory and the mental habit of looking too intensely 
at certain phases of the subject, to the exclusion by inattention 
of other phases equally important. When the mind becomes 
steadily engrossed with the wrongs which seem to be so indisso- 
lubly bound up with what appears to be social despotism and 
cruelty, it is natural enough to infer that freedom must be the 
means of redressing the wrong. Such logic may be perfectly 
unexceptionable, admitting its premises; but its premises are at 
fault. It totally mistakes the possibilities of human nature, and 
is never the method of balanced minds thoroughly disciplined. 
It may be, and usually is, the method of people of generous 
sympathies, who are evidently sincere and thoroughly in earnest; 
but this does not sanctify the character of the method. It was 
the doctrine of the French Revolution that freedom was the 
panacea for all social and political wrongs; and the delusion has 
not yet passed away. On the contrary, like many another mis- 
taken view, it appears, under the stimulus of goading wrongs, to 
have undergone a sort of development, having reached the 
stages at present known as Anarchism and Nihilism. 

The doctrine of " individual sovereignty" is a one-sided dream, 
and " affectional freedom " is but a corollary of that dream. 
They are part of the general effort to escape corporate control 
under the acute consciousness of individual suffering which is 
developed under every high civilization. There is irresistible 
fascination in the idea that the "perfect liberty of each is compat- 
ible with the perfect liberty of all." — (Fichte.) But it is only 
true by construing the word " perfect " to mean qualified. It is, 
on the contrary, the fact that, " perfect freedom obtains in 
nothing human; there are obstructions on every hand, not phys- 



44 2 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. [Chap. XXXIII. 

ical only, but also intellectual and moral." — (Walker.) It is a 
profound view of the subject, which no uncompromising advo- 
cate of social freedom and sexual equality has yet mastered, that 
" no political [or social] right is absolute and of universal appli- 
cation, — each having its conditions, qualifications, and limita- 
tions." — (Parkman.) 

We must not lose sight of the opposing necessities in human 
nature, through which life must needs thread its way with the least 
friction and contact. How completely these opposing forces 
exert a strain directly against each other, is seen in marriage 
itself. One set impels the individual toward marriage, the other 
holds him back. The satisfaction which marriage promises can 
only be had at certain cost. Marriage involves self-denial as the 
condition of its favors. The privileges and gains of married 
life can only be enjoyed by the sacrifice of certain privileges and 
immunities of single life. And then, within the bond, there are 
counter sets of forces constantly in action; the one to maintain 
the integrity of the union, the other to disrupt it. Social 
position, the sexual impulses, the philoprogenitive instincts, 
children, bind together; difference of tastes, divergence of 
personal interests, rebellion against the subordination of one 
to the other in so close a union, rend asunder. In the 
greater number of cases, the disrupting forces may be so slight 
as scarcely to come into consciousness; in many, the two oppos- 
ing sets are quite equally balanced, and life is distracted with 
the cruel contest ; in others the explosive forces prevail, and the 
bond is broken. The increase of candidates for divorce bears 
testimony to the increasing dissatisfaction in marriage. It is 
here as among laborers, discontent grows with general intelli- 
gence, and the consciousness of possible change. Under this 
increase of dissatisfaction, the divorce laws are being gradually 
made more liberal. And all this is the outcome of what ? Of 
the continual diversification of temperament and taste through 
the mixing of peoples, the spread of general intelligence, and 
the multiplication of human interests. Here we find marriage 
undergoing a gradual change, slow though it be. With the con- 



Sec. 22J.] MONOGAMY AS A FINALITY. 443 

tinual mulplication of the causes of this change, it is likely still 
to go on; and by the accumulation of these small modifications, 
the adjustment of relations between men and women in the 
future may be different from what it is at present. 

Section 223. — Quotations might be given from numerous 
authors and journals to the effect that the existing form of mono- 
gamic marriage is the relic of a different order of things from 
that which is now coming into existence, and that the form of 
the family it involves is not to be accepted as a finality. These 
are not fanatical writers but, for the most part, thinking men and 
women who have endeavored to weigh the difficulties of the 
subject and estimate the drift of social movement; and who have 
not committed themselves to premature or visionary reforms. 
They regard the present constitution of the family as patriarchal 
or feudal, with conventional bonds resting on mere relationship, 
while the higher constitution would be that which should rest on 
friendship and congeniality of tastes. It is anticipated that the 
relations of men and women will undergo change and assume a 
higher form as the necessary requisite of the more exalted form 
of society which is confidently expected. "This theory is that 
we are substituting for the old involuntary family affections of 
our forefathers, voluntary affections based on the infinite veraci- 
ties, in whose precise language, people will, in the future, care 
for one another, not according to the fortuitous connection of 
a common ancestry, but will love or hate one another as they 
find one another amiable or detestable; that parents will care 
for their children as they are to their taste or not, and children 
will ground their feelings toward their parents on the same cir- 
cumstance. We shall no more see the disgusting complications 
which now arise in families from incompatibility of temper, but 
the most frank relations in the world will take the place of the 
false and hypocritical ones established by tradition." — (The 
Nation, April 15, 1869). 

But these writers have no doubt contemplated the subject 
under the bias of the optimism which has been so long the 
fashion, and have in consequence assumed possibilities which do 



444 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. [Chap. XXXI II. 

not exist. This is shown by the naive remark of one of them 
that, "Mankind will be happy, and if that is not possible with 
marriage as it is, then must the form of marriage be changed." 
— (Die Neue Zeit, January 22, 1870). 

The following appears to be a careful statement which is given 
by one who has studied this subject deeply : " When the fact 
is accepted that the family has passed through four successive 
forms, and is now in a fifth, the question at once arises whether 
this form can be permanent in the future. The only answer that 
can be given is, that it must advance as society advances, and 
change as society changes, even as it has done in the past. It 
is the creature of the social system, and will reflect its culture. 
As the monogamian family has improved greatly since the com- 
mencement of civilization, and very sensibly in modern times, it 
is at least supposable that it is capable of still further improve- 
ment until the equality of the sexes is attained. Should the 
monogamian family, in the distant future, fail to answer the 
requirements of society, assuming the continuous progress of 
civilization, it is impossible to predict the nature of its successor." 
— (L. H. Morgan, Ancient Society, 491-2). No doubt marriage 
will change, to adapt itself to the conditions of society ; and 
this will take place whether society progress, or whether it 
" develop in the wrong direction," as the Duke of Argyll 
expresses it. Morgan's anticipation of future improvement in 
society is not quite unqualified ; but all are not so careful. The 
unreserved anticipation of future improvement in society as the 
basis of improvement in marriage, may be at fault in various 
ways. It assumes a general psychological elevation of the race 
which is not to be counted on, as we think has been sufficiently 
shown in the last two chapters. It appears furthermore to over- 
look the fact that the changes now taking place in marriage 
quite resemble the changes it underwent in Roman society, dur- 
ing the latter part of the Republic and the beginning of the 
Empire. Marriage there differentiated into different forms, from 
the most rigid possible to the most lax ; that is, within the pale 
of wedlock, there was great progress in the direction of freedom. 



Sec. 223.] PERFECTION IN MARRIAGE IMPOSSIBLE. 445 

But these changes in marriage corresponded with the decline of 
Roman society ; and it may be a question whether any such 
advance towards freedom in the marriage relation is compatible 
with that moral strength which preserves a people and makes it 
great. It is more apt to be allied with the intoxication of super- 
abundance and high life, with luxury, pleasure-seeking, degen- 
eracy. It is incompatible with the severer virtues, which deny 
the individual self for corporate good ; and it is not, perhaps, to 
be welcomed as an omen of unexceptionable improvement. It 
led to the depravation and extinction of the old Greek and 
Roman stock ; and this should be a warning to us that the pres- 
ent tendencies toward social freedom are not so much an earnest 
of coming elevation as of coming degeneracy. 

What the future relations of men and women will be, it is not 
possible now to forecast; but one thing is sure, be they what 
they may, there will still be occasions of injustice and discord, 
and still many a heart will ache. There will always be competi- 
tion for the affections of the other sex, under whatever form of 
marriage, and winners and losers as now; and when, frequently, 
the winners will be the greater losers, and the losers really the 
winners, with suffering whether they lose or win. It would not be 
warrantable to infer from the fact — if fact it be — that discord and 
unhappiness in marriage are greater now than in the earlier 
stages of our civilization, that, therefore, they are to become still 
greater, whatever the form of the relation; but I hold it to be 
impossible to conceive of any adjustment of these relations on 
the basis of human nature, without opening the door on one 
side or other to the entry of disturbing elements. There are 
constitutional antitheses and contradictions in the emotional 
nature, which will forever prevent the affectional harmony which 
visionaries hope for. Sexual love is a compound of physical 
and spiritual elements, which, as we have seen, involves the 
paradox that a sufficiency for the end necessarily implies a 
redundance. The quite inexhaustible resources of the spiritual 
are necessarily stanched in large measure by the stringent limi- 
tations and exacting nature of the physical, and the two cannot 



44^ THE RELIGIOUS CONSOLATIONS. [Chap. XXXIV. 

be divorced from each other. Add to this the increasing size 
of the male head, if continued evolution in this direction is to 
be admitted, involving by correlation a change in the physical 
build and mental constitution of woman (section 216), thus ever 
making the difference wider between the sexes, and ever pre- 
serving the conditions of reproduction at the expense of the 
common basis of companionship. Still add that with the refine- 
ment and culture of peoples, the pain of childbirth (unless miti- 
gated by anaesthetics) and the frailty of infancy increase; and if 
there be greater joy in welcome births, it comes with greater 
solicitude and pain. Regard it as we may, we cannot elevate 
the crests of the waves without deepening the hollows between; 
and wherever the field of sensibility is exquisite, we may be 
sure that the ecstasy of enjoyment and the despair of suffering 
are very near to each other. However much our optimistic bent 
may incline us to envelop the future in an effulgence of bliss, 
we must, nevertheless, come in our cooler moments to the facts 
of recorded and present experience, and these compel us to 
reject the notion of perfect harmony in the affectional relations 
at any time or under any circumstances, as a Utopian dream. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

THE RELIGIOUS CONSOLATIONS. 

Section 224. — Another field in which feeling has played a 
large part in relation to happiness, is that of religion. The point 
with which we are here concerned is, whether religion becomes 
the source of a greater or less average of happiness as the world 
grows older. It has always had its two sides. Religious feel- 



See. 22J.] DEITIES OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLE. 447 

ing and religious rites, no doubt, had their origin in fear and 
dread, in the interests of hope and confidence. The one per- 
vading feature of primitive religions, whether revealed in history 
or observed by modern travelers, is that the rites and observances 
thereof are deprecatory. The peoples fear their gods. Their 
notion of the beings, whom they imagine controlling the ele- 
ments, and appointing the events of human life, is that they are 
inclined to malignancy, and looking out for chances and pretexts 
to do harm. Hence, the great object of primitive religious rites 
is to please and appease these divinities. In primitive religions, 
the positive element appears to be dread of divine malice; and 
the negative element the assurance of divine favor. But, while 
there is a considerable degree of apprehension, fear, and terror 
associated with primitive religion, which it is difficult for the 
civilized mind to measure, it is probably not so great as is some- 
times supposed. The devotees cringe to their deities, but not 
without believing that their deities may also cringe to them. If 
the required good is not forthcoming, they chastize their gods by 
inflicting indignity upon them, or upon their images. But, as 
among primitive peoples there is so little assurance of regularity, 
and life so completely at the mercy of the elements and the 
caprices of fortune, over all of which their religion broods, it has 
to be admitted that it is almost, or quite wholly, made up of the 
conflicting emotions of hope and fear, with the joy of success 
and the gloom of disappointment. But the primitive man is not 
so sensitive as the civilized man, and the contrast in these emo- 
tions is not so sharply drawn as further on in the scale of mental 
development. He neither enjoys so much, nor suffers so much, 
whether it be of the religious or any other emotion. 

Section 225. — When the conception of continued existence 
after death came to be added to the stock of religious ideas, 
there appears to have been a clear gain to the side of happiness. 
Still, in early times, the notion of the future life does not appear 
to have been a flattering one. The departed were only shades 
— such beings as the living saw in their dreams no doubt — and 
not capable of a full measure of enjoyment, such as was experi- 



448 THE RELIGIOUS consolations. \Chap. XXXIV, 

enced in real life. They would no doubt have made the future 
life an elysiumof bliss, if they had had their own unrestrained 
way with it, but they were hedged in by the limits of their expe- 
rience; and they peopled the nether world only with the shades 
of human beings. This, however, changed in time, and the 
future life came to be looked forward to for greater happiness 
than is possible on earth. The admission of the natural body, 
improved and glorified, into the future state of existence pre- 
sented something tangible, around which the fondness of antici- 
pation might cluster its creations. But, unfortunately, the 
nerves of sense may suffer as well as enjoy; — and still religion 
kept up its duality of balances. Even in the realm of faith the 
gain must be offset with an equal loss — such is the perversity of 
human nature. Along with the heaven of bliss was conceived 
the hell of infinite and everlasting torture; and along with 
angels and ministering spirits came demons and devils, and the 
religious mind was an arena of perpetual warfare. 

Those who held these views were, doubtless, more sensitive 
than primitive people, without being remarkable for tenderness 
of sympathy, else such dogmas must have ensured for them the 
dread presence of mental agony all through life. It is no doubt 
a principle of compensation to be thankful for, that the mind 
which suffers greatly from faith in the dreary dogmas, is almost 
certain in the end to reject them. We live in a period when the 
weird and lugubrious are departing. Witches and malignant 
spirits are not much abroad now; the devil is well nigh chained; 
hell is subjected to the modern improvements, and it is no 
longer the terrible place it was. But alas, with the abatement of 
hell comes also an abatement of heaven ! The life hereafter is 
conceived in the midst of civilization, as among less cultured 
peoples, to be only a continuation of this life with little change 
in any way; and following fast upon the heels of this is the 
growing suspicion that there is no hereafter at all. So that in 
getting rid of the terrible, its antithesis seems equally ready to 
depart. "Heaven and hell are corollaries which rise and fall 
together." — (Leslie Stephen). I aim but to state a fact as per- 



Sec. 2 2 J.] COMPENSATING EXTREMES. 449 

ceived by accurate observers, and which almost any one may 
verify for himself. 

Those who are most advanced in intelligence indulge little in 
the ecstasies of religion. No one can shout glory in the sure 
consciousness of the remission of his sins, unless he first 
believes that his soul is in danger of being lost on account of 
sin. With the dread of the devil and of hell goes the inexpres- 
sible joy of the soul's consciousness of salvation. Without first 
the agony there is no basis for the rapture; and the two very 
well illustrate the equal and opposite poles of the emotional 
magnet. 

During the ages which may be regarded as theological, when 
there was the greatest intensity of religious feelings, religious 
disputes assumed their bitterest form, and led not only to alien- 
ation of feeling and social hostility, but to the most cruel and 
desolating of wars. With the increase of secular feeling, and the 
decrease of intensity in religious, or rather theological, feeling, 
hostility is much less likely to break out and lead to dire results. 
The leveling down in the sway and intensity of the theological 
animus is accompanied with the equal leveling down of its 
ecstasies and its discordances. The hollows of the waves are 
not so deep because the crests do not rise so high. 

In times past the consolations of religion have been effective 
to brace up the broken spirit of oppressed creatures whose life 
was one continued scene of cheerless reality. If life was poor 
Heaven was made rich. The crushed on earth would be the 
strong in Heaven, and the bond would be the free. But the 
invasion of the theological frame of mind by the secular is dry- 
ing up this fountain of human happiness. This would be a loss 
not so much to be regretted, if we were sure that there is less 
need for such comfort now than in former times. Heaven need 
not be so rich, if life on earth has become richer, and still the 
average of happiness in life would be maintained. Man's mas- 
tery through discovery and invention of the forces of nature 
redounds to his good in many ways, but it is nevertheless narrow- 
ing the field for providential interference, changing the character 



45° THE RELIGIOUS CONSOLATIONS. \Chap. XXXIV, 

of religious expectancy, and depriving it of many of its old 
forms of consolation. But while the earthly life is in many 
respects improved by the appliances of civilization in the bene- 
fits of which all share, there are yet other respects in which 
there is as much need as ever for the consolation which religion 
can scarcely longer give, and which, being constantly sought, 
as constantly eludes the pursuer. 

But we may easily estimate too highly the consolations 
afforded by religion in the past Hell and purgatory and the 
displeasure of avenging deities acted on the fears of believers, 
and their influence was depressing. The decay of the terrible 
dogmas may appear to be a great gain, and yet, although they 
were conceived in gloom, and in gloom held sway, we are quite 
inclined to overrate the unhappiness they caused. The mind 
that could entertain such dogmas in full consciousness, was not 
a mind to take great trouble from the contemplation of their 
consequences. Doubtless with many the fate of the damned 
was felt to be a satisfactory result of persistent refusal of the 
means of grace, and the thought of the torments of the wicked 
may have given pleasure rather than pain. This was probably 
the prevailing feeling in Christendom for centuries. Only on 
this supposition can we understand the genesis and acceptance 
of such beliefs. But it is to be noted that however terrible the 
dogmas of purgatory and hell may have been pictured for the 
alarm of wicked people, there was always provided a ready 
means of escape, which did not necessarily require the self- 
denial which practical virtue implies; and those whom such dog- 
mas really affected could easily secure their escape from eternal 
misery. And since those ages were theological, quite all had 
such connection with the church as secured their own salvation; 
and then if the thought of the sufferings of the unredeemed 
was to increase the happiness of the redeemed, it would be waste 
sympathy on our part to regret the effect of the terrible dogmas 
on human happiness. The little sensibility of those times may 
have required a stimulus of this sort ; and the pleasure derived 
therefrom, even if coarse, like that of the gladiatorial shows 



Sec. 226.'] PRIVATE JUDGMENT AND THE CONVERSE. 45 1 

and the burning of heretics, may even have overbalanced any 
misery they may have caused. Peter. Lombard taught that the 
contemplation of the sufferings of the damned would enhance 
the joy of the redeemed. Very near our own times, Jonathan 
Edwards said : "The view of the misery of the damned will 
double the ardor of the love and gratitude of the saints in 
heaven." And "the sight of hell-torments will incite the happi- 
ness of the saints forever; and it will make them more sensible 
of their own happiness ; it will give them a more lively relish of 
it ! Oh, it will make them sensible how happy they are!" This 
view does not assume that the saints will have much tenderness 
of sympathy — not so much as people in the flesh are usually 
supposed to have. Under the prevalence of greater sympathy, 
and sensibility, and instinctive rationality in our own times, the 
retention of such dogmas would indeed be terrible; and their 
decline is becoming a necessity to prevent the absolute augmen- 
tation of human misery through their direct agency. 

In estimating the drift of what is popularly understood as 
religion, faith, worship, we may safely say that while the dogmas 
have less power to alarm than in times past, they have also less 
power to console, and that this tendency is still in progress. The 
loss of the power to curse in the name of dogmatic religion goes 
with the loss of power to bless; and the end is not yet. 

Section 226. — The professed religious people of the civilized 
world are at present somewhat indistinctly divided into two great 
parties, the one asserting the right of private judgment, the 
other denying it. It may be a question whether Protestantism, 
in stimulating the exercise of this cardinal principle of freedom, 
is doing more for the happiness of the people than the papal 
system in seeking to allay it. Of course, the conditions of hap- 
piness are not the same for all. Granted the intelligence which 
led to Protestantism, then is the more liberal system a necessary 
one in the interest of happiness. But a Roman Catholic will 
tell us that the faith, and confidence, and peace which his church 
cherishes in its people, are better than the wrangle of a thou- 



45 2 THE RELIGIOUS CONSOLATIONS. [Chap. XXXIV. 

sand Protestant sects and the comfortless doubts to which 
Protestantism leads. 

The cultured, intelligent, truth-seeking bent of mind has its 
joys, but therefor it must suffer the pain of doubt, and very often 
the pain of unsettling and casting off old and cherished beliefs. 
It suffers ills which the mind clothed in perpetual faith knows 
nothing of. But on the other hand, the penalty of peace to the 
model papist is mental stupor so far as the highest functions of 
our intellectual nature are concerned. So that while the one 
retains, he cannot gain; and while the other gains, he must lose. 

But this is not a question of what we will, or will not. We 
might demonstrate that the filial trust which the Catholic rou- 
tine secures is superior, and above all things desirable; yet there 
would be no possible way of making it universal. We are driven 
by an inexorable fatality along the pathway of evolution, and we 
must travel it whether we will or not. Admit that Protestantism 
will be resolved eventually into Romanism on the one side and 
into the religion of science on the other, and that in the end the 
religion of science will prevail ; — what is to be hoped from the 
consolations of such religion as science shall embody? It would 
be premature to attempt to point out its gains and losses; but 
both there certainly will be. With progress in science, faith in 
immortality is evidently weakening, while the religious interests 
being weaned from the next world are turning with wiser con- 
cern to this. There is apparently less theology and more catho- 
lic fellow feeling among mankind. If the faith in immortality 
should be lost, it will be a loss which in the present state of the 
human mind, nothing can fully repair. But the intense egotism 
of individuality may abate somewhat with the progress of knowl- 
edge, and there may be compensation for loss in the ideal by 
ameliorations in the actual. The energy now given to the theo- 
retical and practical branches of the theological system, may 
then be given to ascertaining the laws of existence and adopt- 
ing practical measures in accordance therewith to promote the 
welfare of man individually and collectively. But while some- 
thing, perhaps much, is to be hoped for from this diversion of 



Sec. 226.] DOUBTFUL COMPENSATION. 453 

human energy from the interests of a class to the interests of 
men in general, it will no doubt have more than it can do to 
maintain the social status unimpaired against the moral cankers 
of an advancing civilization. 

Should there ever be a reign of science over mankind in gen- 
eral, religion will no doubt be less individual and egoistic than 
in the past, and at the same time more sympathetic and fraternal. 
But even here is a loss for which it will be difficult to find full 
compensation. The law-deity of science is a cold abstraction 
compared with the anthropomorphic deity of theology. The 
former can be looked to for none of that sweet comfort which 
comes of the consciousness that Providence has a personal inter- 
est in us as individuals and cares for us as a parent cares for his 
children. All that science can promise in doubtful compensa- 
tion, is that, for the loss of this ideal personal sympathy from 
above, there shall be more real working sympathy between man 
and man, with improvement in the conditions of his life, afford- 
ing more diversity of opportunity for happy exertion and war- 
ranting life actually better. 

If our view be correct, that the future man is not to be a 
philosopher, but only a being of mediocrity, it might be inferred 
that he will cling to some form of dogma throughout all the 
future as throughout all the past. But we cannot be at all sure 
of this. Not the philosophical and cultured only become skep- 
tical of the prevailing theological systems ; the working people 
of many countries, England, France, Germany, and this country, 
are becoming quite extensively afflicted with the leaven of skepti- 
cism. It seems to spring largely out of the modern control of 
the forces of nature in subjecting them to human uses quite 
independent of any direct assistance from the gods. It is in 
the air, and like a contagion seizes on the minds of common 
people. And so far as the theological bias of such long stand- 
ing permits, the ready common sense of the plain, practical? 
uncultured classes draws inferences unfriendly to priestly pre- 
tensions. 

Now, if all mankind could become highly artistic, sympa- 



454 PAIN AND PLEASURE INSEPARABLE. \C1ldp. XXXV. 

thetic, and philosophical, with an abundance of means for 
the realization of ideals., we might imagine them forming a 
society so exalted that they could get along very well without 
the religious consolations of which there has heretofore been 
such great need. But no such society is possible \ and even if 
scientific in form, it must be composed mainly of mediocre peo- 
ple; and if these may lose their religion, as they are losing it 
under the adverse education of industrial life itself, the loss is a 
real one, for which it is difficult to conceive an adequate com- 
pensation. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

PAIN AND PLEASURE INSEPARABLE. 

Section 227. — Without a complete change in the constitution 
of our emotional nature, pleasure and happiness unmixed with 
pain are not possible. The Utopia of which optimists dream — ■ 
a state of unalloyed bliss — finds no warrant in any rational inter- 
pretation of human experience. Without experience of pain 
we should have no conception of pleasure. "II y a une con- 
nexion necessaire entre le plaisir et la douleur ; il est impossible 
de concevoir que la douleur ne soit pas la 011 est le plaisir." — 
(Bouillier). Voysey, quoted by Dr. Yeo, says : " To enjoy 
pleasure at all there must be alternation with sensations more or 
less painful." Hinton observes : " Whether it may seem para- 
doxical or not, it is a fact in our nature that, without endurance, 
life ceases to be enjoyable ; without pains accepted, pleasure 
will not be permanent." — (Mystery of Pain). Paley puts the 
idea quaintly ; after speaking of the pain as the price of the 
pleasure which follows its cessation, he says : . " I am far from 



Sec. 228.1 RELATIVITY OF PLEASURE AND PAIN. 455 

being sure, that a man is not a gainer by suffering a moderate 
interruption of bodily ease for a couple of hours out of the four- 
and-twenty." 

We are only conscious at all by transition from one state of 
mind to another. — (Section 77). Consciousness owes its exis- 
tence to the differences of feeling which accompany the succes- 
sion of mental changes. Without unlikeness between one men- 
tal action and another, there would be but one thought, and 
consequently no thought at all, for want of the differences which 
give definition. With only one idea, if it were possible, we 
should be worse off than driveling idiots. " To be always sensi- 
ble of the same thing is not to be sensible of anything." — 
(Hobbes). This difference between thoughts runs through all 
grades from the merest difference to perfect contrast or opposi- 
tion. Hence, the axiom in logic that we do not know what 
any given thought is until we know what it is not. " We only 
know anything by knowing it as distinguished from something 
else ; all consciousness is of difference ; two objects are the 
smallest number required to constitute consciousness ; a thing 
is only seen to be what it is by contrast with what it is not." — ■ 
(J. S. Mill). This is the law of every form of conscious feeling ; 
and as we have already seen, in listing the emotional opposites 
of the human mind (Section 80), every feeling has its antithesis. 

Section 228. — The relativity of pleasure and pain is proved 
by the commonest experiences of life. The youth who is in 
possession of perfect health and has never been sick, does not 
realize the wealth of his possession. There is a scale of health 
measured by degrees, and one who has not had experience on 
a long range of the scale is not capable of estimating the meas- 
ure of such health experiences as differ only by small degrees. 
While a slight indisposition may make a usually well person 
miserable, the bed-ridden subject is happy only to be able to 
look out of the window and see the sunshine and the fields; and 
if barely able to walk about and enjoy these luxuries, he is in 
an ecstasy of delight. The strong one is miserable and the 
feeble one is happy because the feelings of each are determined 



456 PAIN AND PLEASURE INSEPARABLE. [Chap. XXXV. 

by comparison with previous experiences. Dr. George M. 
Beard observes: "Perfect health of itself is not a condition 
of positive happiness, and is not at all essential to happiness. 
The happiest persons I have seen, or expect to see, were partial 
invalids." And further on: "The mystery, long noted by 
physicians, that patients who are half cured of a severe malady 
are more grateful than even those fully cured, is explained by 
the fact that we need a certain degree of debility, a limited and 
bearable amount of pain or discomfort, to keep us constantly 
mindful, by contrast, of the pleasantness of our present state as 
compared with what it has been or might be." — (American Nerv- 
ousness, 277-8). Feeling in general, like the sense of temperature, 
is relative, and is aptly paralleled by the well-known experiment 
which is used to illustrate the relativity of the sense of tempera- 
ture. The water in the intermediate basin is either warm or 
cold to the touch as determined by the relative condition of the 
nerves that test it; just as in life, the same experiences may 
give either pleasure or pain, owing to the condition in which the 
receptivity of the subject may be. 

The relativity of our estimate of pleasure and pain is brought 
into definite shape, and given even mathematical expression by 
Fechner, and is thus summarized by Henry Farquhar (Popular 
Science Monthly, August, 1879: "Sensibility to grief and joy, 
as the experience of every one will attest, becomes feebler with 
an increase of the amount sustained. So, a faint sound can be 
heard only in comparative silence, and our footsteps surprise us 
by their resounding din on the floor of an empty hall, though 
no louder, as reflection easily assures, than when the hall is 
filled with a bustling multitude. So, though the stars give us 
their whole light in the daytime, our eye, with the stimulus of an 
illuminated atmosphere, fails to discover them. This law, as 
stated by Fechner, is, in mathematical language, the excitement 
of a nerve varies in arithmetical progression as the exciting 
cause varies in geometrical progression, or degrees of sensation 
correspond to logarithms of the quantities perceived." A like 
formula of the law is that, sensation is the logarithm of stimu- 



Sec. 22$.] CONTRAST NECESSARY TO APPRECIATION. 457 

his; but it is not at all in the nature of the emotional sphere, 
owing to individual idiosyncrasy and variability of mood, to 
admit of any such mathematical precision, and we can only 
accept Fechner's law as indicating, in a general way, the relative 
proportion of stimulus to feeling. 

It is on a principle nearly related to this, that people may 
become so used to painful experiences as to be comparatively 
little affected by them; while on the other hand, when not so 
used to them, a little adverse experience may cause pain appar- 
ently out of all proportion to its cause. The same is to an 
equal extent true of pleasurable experiences. Even pessimists 
must admit of pleasures which have little or no direct connec- 
tion with pain, as, a ramble in the groves, a walk by the sea, 
viewing a beautiful landscape. But those who are in the pres- 
ence of such scenes every day of their lives become indifferent 
to them. The impression cannot retain its freshness under 
frequent repetition. Should these same people be confined in 
prison or among the dingy walls of the city, they would come 
suddenly to an appreciation of rural beauty. So, thousands 
enjoy civil liberty and never think of the boon; but three years 
service under military law has brought many a one to a sense 
of the value of civil freedom. Thus, what seems to be unmixed 
good may not be appreciated until it appears in the light of a 
contrast, and by such contrast is it intensified even when appre- 
ciated. 

Those who are born rich cannot thoroughly appreciate the 
value of having the means wherewith to do. Only those can 
who have suffered from limitation in this respect. To a person 
in want, a hundred dollars may be a godsend, giving inexpres- 
sible joy; to the wealthy man it is only a bagatelle which stirs 
not the smallest ripple of emotion. There is not the same 
difference in the happiness of the different orders of society as 
the difference in their outward condition would indicate. It is 
relative with classes, as it often is with individuals. Many a one 
will "fly to pieces" at some trivial mishap, who would meet a 
great calamity with the bearing of a hero. Members of the 



45 8 PAIN AND PLEASURE INSEPARABLE. \Chap. XXXV. 

humble classes have their moderate aims in life, and success 
brings pleasure and disappointment pain, just as in the higher 
ranks where the stake appears to be much greater. The wealthy 
are greatly envied, and often by those who are better off than 
themselves in the real enjoyments of life. It is quite true "that 
luxury adds less to the ordinary enjoyment of life than most 
men struggling with penury suppose : there are special delights 
attending the hard-earned meal, and the eagerly expected 
amusement, which must be weighed against the profuser pleas- 
ures that the rich can command; so that we may fairly conclude 
that increase of happiness is very far from keeping pace with 
increase of wealth." — (Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 144). 
Great wealth performs the double function of bringing anxiety 
and perplexity on the one hand, and frivolity, indolence, and 
ennui on the other. Usually one member of the family cares 
for the estate, and the rest have nothing to do but to ape the 
prevalent ways of enjoying it. And the trouble with this class 
in finding enjoyment is, that constant satiety is not compatible 
with the zest of enjoyment which flows from the gratification of 
sharpened appetite. There is no jubilant feeling, for want of the 
subjective contrast from which such feeling springs. The lady 
who puts on a fine dress but once a week enjoys it more, feels 
finer, than if she went sumptuously clothed every day. The 
torture of the luxurious is to find contrast, not only in the style 
of life, but in the feeling which accompanies it. Fear and 
apprehension lend greater distinctiveness to hope. There is no 
rest for those who never get tired. And for the weariness and 
disgust of satiety there is absolutely no remedy but the diver- 
sion to honest occupation, — and this rests under the inevitable 
ban of genteel scorn. The holidays of the working people, by 
virtue of their contrast with the every day experiences of life, 
have for them a freshness and buoyancy which the wealthy idle 
and the sated pleasure-hunters seldom enjoy. It is the "rare- 
ness gives leisure half its charm." A gambol on the lawn or a 
stroll by the lakeside rests and refreshes the children of honest 
toil, who can afford, indeed, to be little envious of the dead 



Sec. 22(?.] PLEASURE PREDOMINATES OVER PAIN. 459 

level in high life so at variance with the conditions of a high 
order of enjoyment. The exclusive pursuit of pleasure itself 
proves that it is no absolute thing to be had without price. I 
say no new thing; the law is understood even by those who set 
it at defiance. Seneca is thus on record concerning pleasures: 
"The more in number and the greater they are, the more general 
and absolute a slave is the servant of them. Let the common 
people pronounce him as happy as they please, he pays his lib- 
erty for his delights, and sells himself for what he buys." 

Section 229. — The pain accompanying desire is attended with 
anticipation, which renders desire of mixed character, containing 
both pleasure and pain, — the measure of intensity and of hope 
connected therewith determining whether pleasure or pain shall 
predominate. While the earliest experience associated with 
motion of the muscles teaches to avoid pain and seek pleasure, 
this is what every one does all through life with more or less wis- 
dom. In simple forms of life it is easy enough, but more diffi- 
cult in complicated forms placed within a complicated environ- 
ment, to find the pleasurable and avoid the painful. Add to 
this, that we are formed under the exercise of choice, getting 
our physical and mental constitution from development under 
the action of seeking the pleasurable and avoiding the painful, 
and surely we have warrantable ground for the doctrine that the 
pleasures of existence far outweigh its pains. It is an example 
of motion in the direction of least resistance. This might not, 
however, decide whether or not the environment is calculated 
to give pleasure rather than pain ; but when we reflect that the 
environment itself is the product of motion in the direction of 
least resistance, there is some warrant for the assumption of a 
necessary prevalence of harmonious over discordant action. 

Mr. Sully rejects the pleasurability of function as an element 
which tells for the prevalence of pleasure over pain in existence, 
because of the great amount of pain which is compatible with 
the necessary discharge of function and with continued exist- 
ence. But this seems to overlook the large part which the 
voluntary element in function plays in connection with life and 



460 PAIN AND PLEASURE INSEPARABLE. [Chap. XXXV. 

development. In the higher spheres of life, however, he fully 
recognizes the weight of this voluntary element. "As soon 
as intelligence discovers that there are fixed objects, per- 
manent sources of pleasure, and large groups of enduring inter- 
ests, which yield a variety of such recurring enjoyments, the 
rational will preferring the greater to the less, will unfailingly 
devote its energies to the pursuit of these." — (Pessimism.) 

All through life we are constantly choosing the agreeable and 
avoiding the painful, just as the child learning to use its hands, 
only in a higher and more complex way. "In this way the wise 
man seeks to keep his desires within the boundaries of possibil- 
ity. He learns to abandon the wild, foolish, unguided longings 
of youth, and endeavors to satisfy himself, in a sense, with 
hopes and aims which rest on the basis of fact." And further: 
"To gain this command over one's life, to rise to the calm view 
of the larger collective ends, and to subordinate all particular 
impulses to a general dominant plan of felicity — this it may be 
said, means harsh self-discipline and fatiguing effort. I do not 
deny the fact. Yet reasonable persons will hardly imagine that 
such pain really renders doubtful the clear remainder of pleasur- 
able conditions which is secured by these operations." — (Sully). 

Self-restraint is unfailingly necessary to the largest measure of 
happiness. Without such restraint, we are tortured with futile 
desire, and in order to avoid the pain attending such desire, we 
voluntarily incur the milder pain of self-restraint. It is from 
such consideration the fact comes clearly into consciousness, 
that the moral life is the adjustment of conflict in such way as 
to avoid the greater evil and secure the greater good. The 
greater balance of happiness can only be had by paying its price. 

Making up the mind, or forming a resolution amidst conflict- 
ing considerations is a mental phenomenon which is familiar to 
every deliberative person, and it illustrates the conflict which 
concerns the adjustment of conduct to the situations of life. 
Franklin's "moral algebra," by means of which he determined 
the right thing to do, affords a graphic representation of the 
sphere of antagonism. Setting down his reasons pro and con on 






Sec. 2JO.] OVERCOMING OPPOSITION. 46 1 

the two sides of the equation, he then compared them together, 
estimating their values as accurately as possible, and cancelling 
the positive and negative equivalents, the remainder showed on 
which side the greater weight of reason lay, and determined the 
character of the resolution. All seemingly desirable things can- 
not be had, for they are in conflict, and one part excludes the 
other, till only a residue may be utilized on the side of enjoy- 
ment. 

Section 230. — One of the most exquistite of pleasures is that 
of overcoming opposition and compassing an end in spite of its 
difficulties. This " contumacy in man," as Seneca calls it, is 
an inheritance we should not think lightly of. Without struggle 
there can be no victory and none of the joy which comes of 
victory. But much depends on the prize for which the contest 
is had. The devouring passion among the votaries of fashion 
to excel in the trivial vanities of life, is never fully compensated 
by the vulgar feeling of such a triumph, even when it crowns the 
struggle. And in the lower ranks of society the disadvantages 
of position are such that the contestants are weighted with the 
enervating conviction that at best they can do little more than 
hold their own. The position and prospects of the intermediate 
classes have more to encourage. Here effort may win, and the 
winnings give pleasure, When persistence and endurance are 
summoned by the effort, its successful results are anticipated 
with keener relish than if it was made with little sacrifice. The 
apparent impossibility of doing a thing is sometimes the stimu- 
lus to undertaking it and the support of a long-continued 
struggle for its accomplishment. A small prize may in this way 
bring greater happiness than a much larger one which is backed 
by no heroism in the winning. The greater the pain of procur- 
ing, the greater the zest of enjoying. Within certain limits it is 
the contrast that tells. The race only gets the means of enjoy- 
ing life by a struggle, by labor, by self-denial; and that every indi- 
vidual does not take his share of this self-denial is because of the 
incongruities of life, for which he and all others must suffer in 

some form ; — and all this in accordance with the principles which 
21 



462 PAIN AND PLEASURE INSEPARABLE. \CJlCtp. XXXV. 

these chapters aim to elucidate, — that every good thing has its 
price. 

The law of success in every field of endeavor is that, it is the 
reward of a certain sum of repugnance overcome. Be it some 
field of learning, some branch of science, some department of. 
philosophy, some speciality in the arts or in the professions, dis- 
tinction implies assiduous labor, attention to dry details, per- 
sistent bent of mind to the object in view. No man ever became 
an authority but through a deal of irksome labor, which no lover 
of ease would think of doing. Fame is the reward of toil now 
as well as in the heroic age, when Hercules said to his son 
Philoctetes : 

"Thou knowest what toils, what labors I endured, 
Ere I by virtue gained immortal fame; 
Thou too, like me, by toils must rise to glory; 
Thou too must suffer ere thou canst be happy." 

— \_Sophocles. 

Section 231. — Much quiet may come to the perturbed mind 
from the reflection that it might have been worse with us than 
it is. By contrast with lower conditions, we should be more 
content with our own. Set all on the same dead level, and we 
should lose both the example of the poorer, which reproaches 
us for whining, and the example of the better, which stimulates 
us to hopeful exertion. But if contrast with the lower favors 
content, contrast with the higher favors discontent ; and the two 
are interblended along the entire social scale. In regard to the 
acquisition of wealth, it is a common remark that success never 
brings contentment, but ever whets the desire for more. It is so 
in relation to knowledge, in relation to social and political rank. 
Those below are striving to enter the class next above, or so far 
as possible to ape it ; and while success in this direction gives 
pleasure, it is but the renewal of the stimulus to discontent and 
to further effort. Those who are at the very " top " are not 
satisfied, but are straining still further to surpass those below. 
Such as are in high official position are no more happy than 
those who have great wealth. The salary is not great enough to 
keep up the desired display — and it would not be enough if ever 



Sec. 2JI.] HAPPINESS IN HIGH PLACES. 463 

so great — and many are tempted into questionable devices for 
relief. There is always something beyond them which they are 
striving to reach, and if not successful they are unhappy, 
and generally unhappy even if successful. There is no more 
wretched class of people than our political aspirants. " Ambi- 
tion puffs up with vanity and wind ; and we are equally troubled 
either to see anybody before us, or nobody behind us." — 
(Seneca). It is a fine thing to get to Congress, or to be the 
governor of a State ; but those who have mounted these rounds 
of the political ladder, want to go still higher. The most ambi- 
tious are desperate to get into the Senate, the Cabinet, the White 
House. To this end many are ready to lay aside their manli- 
ness, and become the tools of powerful classes who are able to 
reward them through the manipulation of public sentiment. 
Many are they who indulge the hope of one day being President 
of the United States, most of whom must be disappointed. 
But the attainment of this end does not satisfy. Few but want 
a second term after having tasted of the first ; and then even it 
goes hard to lay down power. The third term may be more des- 
perately and persistently sought after than the first ; and this 
achieved, it may be thought of as a life tenure, and finally as a 
family possession to be transmitted to a royal line. When men 
have given way all life long to the ambition of place, this desire 
of occupying the highest may become an infatuation. Some of 
the aspirants suppress the manifestation of it better than others. 
It may be that disappointment in this direction has almost 
broken the hearts and shortened the lives of several prominent 
Americans ; yet, how many below them had envied them their 
happiness, illustrating well the mistaken identity of the phantoms 
we pursue. Of course the pleasure derived from the possession 
cf place is an exquisite one, but it costs all it is worth, in the 
anxiety of mind in the struggle to reach it. And then to this 
we must add the dissatisfaction with it when had, and the dis- 
appointment of those who fail. Those with less ambition do 
not, indeed, enjoy the pleasure of position, but they escape on 
the other hand " the penalties of greatness." 



464 PAIN AND PLEASURE INSEPARABLE. [Chap. XXXV. 

"I envy all who pass their lives, secure 
From danger, to the world, to fame unknown, 
But those to greatness raised I envy not. " 

— Euripides' Agamemnon. 

In this field as in so many others, — pleasure gained, price paid. 

Section 232.— To a certain degree the pain is the measure 
of the enjoyment. The pleasure of taking food is in proportion 
to the pain of hunger. Yielding to slumber is sweeter for pro- 
longed vigils. Rest is most welcome when we are really tired. 
The sense of chilliness adds to the gratefulness of warmth. As 
a rule the greater the pain of deprivation, the greater the pleas- 
ure of gratification. "Ainsi, tout de meme qu'il n'est pas 
possible de separer la douleur du plaisir, tout de meme il n'est 
pas possible qu'ils ne soient pas en proportion Tun avec l'autre. 
Les grandes joies ne sont qu'a, la condition des grandes doulers." 
— (Bouillier). "Surely a truer knowledge lays its fullest and 
intensest grasp upon the painful elements of life, and holds them 
as the fundamental conditions of its joys." — (Hinton). 

This law holds among the higher sentiments. The pain which 
is suffered in the contemplation of misery, is the precise measure 
of the gratification which is felt in the contemplation of happi- 
ness. With an acute sense of justice, satisfaction with the pre- 
valence of right is only equaled by outrage with the prevalence 
of wrong. The more the truth is loved, the greater the detesta- 
tion of falsehood. The artistic sense more than another enjoys 
the beautiful and fitting, but at the same time suffers more from 
the presence of the incongruous and uncouth. The musical 
capacity of the ear is measured as well by its offense with discord 
as by its delight with concord. Symmetry is made more apparent 
by contrast with deformity. We judge of quality altogether by 
comparison, a principle which tricky dealers sometimes make use 
of to deceive their customers. The pleasure anticipated in the 
possession of an object is only equaled by the pain of missing 
it. The alternation of opposites in the emotions referred to in 
a previous chapter (Section 78), is to the point here, as when love 
turns into hate: "No hate so strong as what from dead love 
springs." — (Plato). 



Sec. 2 J 2J\ HIGHEST TASTES DISSATISFIED. 465 

That pain and pleasure should be, to a certain extent, the 
measure of each other is to be expected from the fact that both 
depend on the same system of nerves; and that they should 
advance together in the career of development is also to be 
expected for the same reason. If the nerves are fine and sensitive, 
the pleasure is exquisite, and so also is the pain. In the lower 
animals there is a smaller range between the extreme of pain and 
the extreme of pleasure than in man; and in savages the range is 
less than in people of culture. It is true of compound as well as of 
simple feeling, that if the nervous seat of emotion favors a high 
degree of enjoyment, it favors equally a high degree of suffering. 
The more devoted the friendship, the greater the suffering when 
friends are torn asunder by any fatality. The greater the 
mother's love for her infant, the greater her anxiety when its life 
is in danger. And there is no escape from this dual action on 
the nerves of sensibility. The joy is sure to meet with its com- 
pensating sorrow. Members of the family, of the group of 
friends, must be surrendered one by one; and then the feeling of 
loss is commensurate with the remembrance of possession. And 
there is not a joy in all life, but has this poison in it, that it must 
come to an end at last. 

" The flower that smiles to-day 
To-morrow dies; 
All that we wish to stay- 
Tempts and then flies." 

And especially is this the penalty of living to be old. 

Without a revolution in the environment, it would be cruelty 
to supersede the human, with a higher race of beings — cruelty 
to the higher race; for, even if it were vouchsafed exemption 
from the fatuities of human frailty, it could not escape the inev- 
itable limitations of the physical conditions of life. "It is indis- 
putable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, 
has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a 
highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which 
he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect." Thus 
J. S. Mill. Wollaston declared that brutes are better off than 



466 PAIN AND PLEASURE INSEPARABLE. \Chap. XXXV. 

men, if there is no compensation in a life hereafter for human 
suffering here. But while it is no doubt true that mankind may, 
and in all probability do, enjoy more than they suffer, yet if all 
mankind were organized with fine nerves, gifted with high aspi- 
rations, and endowed with the skill and taste for highly artistic 
execution, then indeed would Wollaston's view of the situation 
be true. 

Section 233. — If it be true that pleasure and pain are rela- 
tive experiences, and that we enjoy and suffer to a large extent 
by comparison — and it is true — then the Utopians, who would 
establish a condition of society in which there would be nothing 
disagreeable, nothing repugnant, nothing painful, with no vic- 
tories to win, and thus annihilate emotional contrasts to secure 
perfect happiness, would thereby destroy the very conditions of 
happiness. We can readily imagine a state of uninterrupted 
enjoyment; but we forget that we are looking at the matter from 
present experiences in which the sense of pain enlivens our con- 
ception of its opposite ; and it is a trick of the emotions we 
cherish to assert their own eternity. Without its opposite to 
give the sense of enjoyment, it could not come into conscious- 
ness; or having once come into consciousness on its legitimate 
conditions, without alternation with contrast of feeling, it would 
very soon pall on the nerves of sensibility. Not only is the 
sensation something like the logarithm of stimulus, but if the 
stimulus be too long continued without variation, the nerves 
require something else for relief, and to break the monotony, 
even welcome a disagreeable sensation otherwise caused. Hence 
the mistake of Mohammedans regarding an exclusively sensual 
paradise, and of sensational Christians who think they will enjoy 
the rapture of a whole eternity shouting around the throne. It 
is a far more sensible rendering of common experience that 
" we can only get to heaven by going through hell": "No 
cross, no crown." The idea of making existence exclusively 
happy is like that of creating something out of nothing, or of 
getting a working power without an adequate source. In the 
utilization of steam as power there must be a long thermomet- 



Sec 2JJ.] LAW OF DIFFERENCES. 467 

ric scale between the temperature of the vapor and that of sur- 
rounding space (section 54). Contrast in temperature is abso- 
lutely necessary to the existence of the working power; no more 
can there be pleasure and happiness without emotional contrast 
The molecules of nearly all the chemical elements are dual or 
polar (section 47), the presence of one half of the unit always 
implying the presence of the other. It is so with pleasure and 
pain as elements of consciousness; therefore, does the moral 
outlook of life necessarily exclude the perfection of unalloyed 
bliss, or any near approach to it The forms and degrees of 
pleasure and pain will change in the future as they have in the 
past, but they will always go hand in hand. 

Note. — The views stated in this chapter have been familiar to the writer's 
mind for many years, but they were not written out till some months after having 
read in the Popular Science Monthly (November, 1877} an articb on the Law of. 
Differences, by John W. Saxon. On referring to the article, I find I have used 
some of the same illustrations, in my own way, however, and have been, per- 
haps, in other respects, influenced by it. As to that matter, however, Plato has 
somewhat the advantage of either of us in priority, both as to the doctrine and 
its illustrations (section 2). "Sad havoc makes he with our originalities." 

Mr. Saxon's article skilfully molds the old doctrine into forms of modern 
thought. The following are extracts from it: "Keep in mind that, as all 
knowledge comes to us as the result of the different,, so do all emotions of pain 
or of pleasure. Every quality that is thinkable implies its opposite, or at least 
its different in degree. Happiness and misery are only relative terms. Absolute 
happiness cannot exist any more than a magnetic needle with only one pole." 
"Take the happiness that comes from social position in life. It arises from the 
fact that we are higher up than some one else. Bring all to the same level, and 
it would be enough to make an angel weep to see how much happiness some 
people would lose. Many would be bankrupt. Take the tramps and vagabonds 
out of society, and the whole fabric would be cut down one story; for, to change 
the figure, they put one more round into the ladder — it matters not that it is at 
the bottom — and give the climber a chance to go one round higher. It is the 
length of the ladder that counts, no matter where the bottom is placed. What 
are wealth and poverty ? Only relative terms. There is none so rich as the 
poor boy who has just received his first dollar for a week of hard work. We 
waste a great deal of pity on those who are born in the humbler ranks of life." 

The following passage from George J. Romanes is valuable for its philosophy, 
as well as its moral, bringing out as it does that pleasure cannot be had without 
paying its price, and that the refusal of the price is nothing saved, since, if not 
paid, it must be made good in the form of penalty : " There is not much to be 
said on the recreation of men belonging to the upper classes. That most objec- 



468 USES IN GENERAL. \Chap. XXXVI. 

tionable of creatures, the gentleman at large without occupation, has a free 
choice before him of every amusement that the world has to give ; but one thing 
he is hopelessly denied — the keen enjoyment of recreation. Living from year to 
year in a round of varied pastimes, he becomes slowly incapacitated for form- 
ing habits of work, while at the same time he is slowly sapping all the enjoyment 
from play. For, although variety of amusement may please for a time, it is 
notorious that it cannot do so indefinitely. The intellectual changes which are 
involved in the changes of amusement are not sufficiently pronounced to recreate 
even the faculties on which the sense of amusement depends ; the mind, there- 
fore, becomes surfeited with a tune too constantly played — even though the tune 
be played in frequently changing keys. For such men, if passed middle life, I 
have no advice to give. They have placed themselves beyond the possibility of 
finding recreation, and their only use in the world is to show the doom of idle- 
ness. They, more than even paupers, are the parasites of the social organism; 
and we can scarcely regret that their lumpish life, being one of stagnation self- 
induced, should be one of miserable failure, to the wretchedness of which we 
can extend no hope." — (Popular Science Monthly). 

I conclude with the testimony in brief of still another witness: "A life from 
which everything that has in it the element of pain is banished, becomes a life 
not worth having; or worse, of intolerable tedium and disgust. There is ample 
proof in the experience of the foolish among the rich, that no course is more 
fatal to pleasure than to succeed in putting aside everything that can call for 
endurance. The stronger and more generous faculties of our nature, debarred 
from their true exercise, avenge themselves by poisoning and embittering all that 
remains." — (Hinton, Mystery of Pain, 47). 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

USES IN GENERAL, SUMMARY, AND CONCLUSION. 

[On the original plan of this volume, the following chapter, 
with four others which preceded it, constituted Part VII., with 
the general title: Practical Illustrations of the Principle. The 
four chapters have been left out, mainly because they would 
make the volume too large. A reason, also, for their omission 
is that they discuss practical questions which interest a far larger 



Sec. 2J4.] FORMS OF ANTAGONISM. 469 

class of readers than could any theoretical discussion of the 
philosophy of conflict. They are reserved for publication in a 
separate small volume with the title — The Reforms: Their Diffi- 
culties and Possibilities. Two of them discuss the question of 
Labor and Capital, one that of Finance, the other Various 
Reforms, — all practical questions of the day. The manner of 
statement adopted therein, it is believed, is within the easy 
comprehension of the people whose interests the discussions 
most concern. Whatever may be thought of the views therein 
given, they have been conceived in a spirit of sincere sympathy 
with "the people" as distinct from privileged classes. 

The lacuna caused by the omission in question necessarily 
detracts somewhat from fullness of statement, and narrows the 
basis on which the following summary rests.] 

Section 234. — The form of optimism which we have had 
particularly in view, is that which regards nature and life as 
essentially harmonious, the discord and pain which prevail being 
incidental or negative, and due mainly to the contumacy of man 
himself in not submitting to the order of nature, or in setting 
up his will against God's will. It is this view, we think, which 
is answerable for so much misconception in the problems of life, 
leading to extravagant expectation and misdirected effort to do 
away with the inevitable. 

If there is general antagonism in the constitution and action 
of matter and the forces, it cannot be without result to know it. 
If the constitution of things be dual and antagonistic, action 
must take place under resistance, and out of this resistance in 
relation to sentient being must arise discord and evil. If man 
is a part of the universe, this ineradicable antagonism must be 
incorporated into his own constitution; and hence antagonism 
must necessarily enter into society and be inseparable from life. 
It is direct and indirect, appearing for the most part, in practical 
life, in veiled and modified forms, in such way that one good 
cannot be had without the loss of another, or there cannot be 
gain on one side without loss on the other. And this being 



47° USES IN general. [Chap. XXXVI. 

deep-seated in the nature of things only admits of direction in 
a certain sense, when it comes within the sphere of the intellect 
and will, and then only through adequate motive. Wise men 
would use the appliances of education and statesmanship to 
develop and strengthen such motive. And this is the more 
necessary because there are times and stages in movement, when 
the better is only to be conserved by struggle. 

If these propositions be true, then can there be no compre- 
hensive philosophy of life without giving them due weight. If 
life cannot be noble without self-denial, if society cannot be 
great without the rigid observance of the sterner virtues, then 
should these principles be inculcated in relation to duty and 
organized as far as possible into practical life, as necessary means 
to the greatest good. 

From the very beginning mankind have no doubt found a 
large proportion of the general sum of happiness in the glamour 
of delusions, which they had themselves wrought into existence 
under the pressure of emotional need. If delusion in its gen- 
eral form of optimism had no foibles with stings, it would be 
cruel to uncover its logical weaknesses. But human nature is 
such that every untruth will be probed to the bottom, and its 
character exposed, whether a practical, good can be shown to 
grow out of the process or not. But optimism has foibles with 
stings. Optimism is not merely untrue; it is largely the occa- 
sion of wasted endeavor and of blasted hopes. If there be evils 
which are not incidental, and which the world cannot outgrow, 
then is it futile to labor for their extermination. The endeavor 
may be ever so well meant, but this would not justify it, if it is 
misdirected. 

It is not always the case that the most enthusiasm is shown 
where the labor tells most for good; very often the endeavor 
becomes fanatical and self-sacrificing when there is no possibility 
of accomplishing the end aimed at. It is precisely when moral 
labor is the most futile that it is apt to be the most unselfish and 
devoted. It is not usually the happy, cheerful natures that make 
this mistake, but the more sensitive and despondent. A cheer- 



SeC. 2J4-~\ INFLUENCE OF TEMPERAMENT. 47 1 

ful person does not take so gloomy a view of existing conditions, 
as does one of the opposite temperament; bad does not seem 
so bad as to such as see through feelings of sympathy and 
despondency. He is pretty well satisfied with things as they are; 
while one of sensitive and sympathetic temperament dwells on 
the pain in the world till his feelings concerning it become 
morbid; and then if he believes that all this evil is unnecessary, 
that by effort and right-doing it may be greatly palliated, or wholly 
eradicated, he throws himself with all his might into the endeavor, 
be it wise or unwise, to bring about this end. This is very 
laudable in all that concerns the motive of the work, but not 
always so laudable in what concerns its fitness and efficiency. 

On the contrary, there is no warrant for the defense of pessim- 
ism on the ground of amiable weaknesses. It is not, like optim- 
ism, apparently calculated to give pleasure by its very delusions. 
It affords no encouragement for trying to make the world better 
by active means. Its panacea is inaction. It would palliate the 
evils of existence by cultivating quietism, and end them through 
the extinction of existence by the stilling of the will. If it is 
a result of optimism to undertake too much, it is a result of 
pessimism to undertake too little. The error, as usual, lies in the 
extremes. 

In tracing optimism and pessimism to differences of temper- 
ament as their respective sources, Mr. Sully doubtless overlooks 
a psychological pecularity which complicates the subject. Very 
often persons of melancholy temperament are the most pro- 
nounced optimists, manifesting a zeal for the furtherance of per- 
fection which is every way creditable to their goodness if not to 
their discernment. This is probably the artistic temperament, 
which will be satisfied with nothing short of perfection. And 
then, we must not forget the tendency of extremes to react into 
each other. The monk dreams of love, the starving castaway 
feasts on sumptuous viands, the Arctic explorer basks in sunny 
fields. In a different connection, however, Mr. Sully states this 
emotional tendency : "It is to be remarked that this idea of 
human improvement frequently takes the vaguer shape of the 



472 USES IN general. \Chap. XXXVI, 

formation of an ideal life, individual and social, which is regarded 
as possible and realizable. It would be found that writers who 
are disposed to be pessimists in relation to obvious facts fre- 
quently fall back on such an ideal conception. For example, 
ethical writers who are ready to take a very humble estimate of 
the average moral condition of mankind, as it actually presents 
itself now, find a solvent for this depressing view of things in the 
idea of a moral regeneration and elevation which clearly lie 
within human reach." — (Pes. 35). There are many such among 
earnest people; the authors of Political Justice and of Race 
Education are striking examples. 

Section 235. — There are minds of a certain temper which will 
not resolve to do, unless the method is radical and heroic, and 
the end to be attained well nigh perfect. Is it temperance 
reform they want? Nothing but the universal and clean sweep 
of prohibition and total abstinence will answer the end. Is 
there injustice in the distribution of wealth? Let it be taken in 
hand for regulation by the State. Are there crying abuses in 
the exercise of political power ? The remedy — abolish the State. 
Does remorseless monopoly crush ? Confiscate rent. Is busi- 
ness dull ? Issue more greenbacks, or increase the tariff. Are 
there religious abuses and degeneracy in the church ? Abolish 
God. Are production and the support of life expensive? Invent 
the perpetual motion: and so on to the end of an almost endless 
list ; and the last may be taken as the type of all of them. The 
perpetual motion runs perfectly in the inventor's head; but 
when he gets it into actual wheels, cogs, shafts, and levers, he is 
the most astonished man in the world to see it stand still. But 
he is almost certain to try again ; and he may die at last in the 
futile attempt. Is such a one wasting life ? The remedy would 
be a little knowledge of physics. It is quite so with the reform- 
ers who have perfect remedies for the cure of social and political 
evils. If they could set up the machinery of their invention for 
a little while, they would be driven by the result to the invention 
of reasons for its failure to run ; and while the schemes had not 
cured the ills of life, they would often fail to cure their invent- 



Sec. 2JS-1 PRACTICAL NEED OF WISER DIRECTION. 473 

ors of their mania for perfection in human affairs. Some, how- 
ever, would become wiser, and would be willing to accept of 
mitigation wherever it is to be had; and some might come to 
perceive that so far from its being a question of perfection, it is 
often a question of greater imperfection, and would even be wil- 
ling to assist in arresting, if possible, certain tendencies in the 
direction of greater wrong. 

Society-curing practice, like some diseases, breaks out from 
time to time with a sort of periodicity. It is the outcome of 
a peculiar, sympathetic, and sanguine temperament ill-disciplined 
for the kind of work it takes in hand. Its arguments are often 
specious, and its sophisms not easy to detect; but with sufficient 
knowledge of fundamental principles, it may be safely pro- 
nounced erroneous without the laborious examination of details. 
A motor of mysterious power, or a perpetual motion, is at once 
condemned by its pretensions, and no physicist inquires into its 
claims. If sociology, or even political economy, were as well 
understood as physics, no claim of a discovery of simple remedy 
for the evils of society would gain credence. We may go back 
to still more fundamental principles. If the doctrine of Con- 
flict and its corollaries be true, all claims for social cure-alls may 
be set down at sight as extravagances. There is no catholicon 
for society any more than an elixir of life for perpetual youth, 
or a philosopher's stone for the transmutation of dross into 
gold. They are all dreams. 

To some it may appear quite uncalled for, this protest against 
the impulsive character of reform movements, because the peo- 
ple so generally show little interest in them, being too busy with 
their own individual interests. It may be said that, while there 
is so much indifference, such movements can do no harm. But 
this would overlook the important fact that this very indifference 
is largely due to the wildness and impracticability, if not injustice, 
of certain attempted "reforms." If the measures of reform were 
generally more comprehensive and practical, and less one-sided 
and sensational, they would suffer fewer abortions to drive off 
practical people; and their steady growth in efficiency would 



474 USES IN general. [Chap. XXXVI. 

secure constantly greater co-operation, and the greatest good 
possible would be done. 

The difference between a practical measure for good and a 
measure for impracticable perfection is very well illustrated by 
the anti-corn-law and chartist agitations which were both raging 
in England at the same time. The chartists believed that the 
free trade agitation, even if successful, would only tickle the sur- 
face a little, while theirs was the cause that would go to the root 
of things and cure all the evils. Just extend the suffrage and 
the people would combine on peoples' measures by unerring 
instinct, and justice and prosperity would forever reign in Great 
Britain. This form of delusion is generic and chronic; it has 
many species still undergoing development, rather than extinc- 
tion. It is forgotten, or not known, that it is easy to deceive, 
corrupt, and mislead the rabble, and that such opportunities are 
always improved. The chartist petition with three million sig- 
natures, requiring sixteen men to carry it into the House of 
Commons, only shows how easy it is to be carried away with the 
delusive glamour of some measure that promises to be thorough 
and complete in its operations ; while less pretentious measures 
are almost sure to accomplish more good. Chartism failed, but 
corn came in tariff free, and cheap bread greatly advanced the 
prosperity of England. 

While it is quite likely that the general class of artistic imprac- 
ticables is multiplying under the influences of existing civiliza- 
tion, there are, of course, many fields in which it finds ample 
occasion for the exercise of its peculiar powers. Especially is 
this the case in America, which is likely to become the nursery 
of an immense brood of vagaries; for even when they do not 
spring up in our own free soil, but originate in Europe, the 
system of espionage and repression in vogue there, sends them 
across to this country, where they take root and fail not to grow 
in our susceptible soil. It becomes us, therefore, in behalf of 
our own National interests, as well as on the more disinterested 
considerations of altruism, to anticipate these evils by all the 
fitting appliances which science, philosophy, and education 



SeC. 236.] GREATEST BALANCE OF GOOD. 475 

place in our hands. It has been a purpose of the present vol- 
ume, whether successful or not, to assist in this work. The 
husbandry of effort would be greatly promoted by a just con- 
ception of what may or may not be accomplished; but if this, 
in the present state of our knowledge, cannot be had, as in 
many instances it cannot, the acknowledgment to ourselves of 
the well grounded distinction between eradicable and ineradi- 
cable evil is a primary condition of deliberate and well directed 
endeavor. We would be better satisfied with the palliation and 
mitigation of certain evils, if we were able to see that their 
complete extirpation is impossible. With such views to guide 
we should quit the fanatical waste of endeavor for "perfection," 
and aim rather to choose the less evil and the greater good, or 
more accurately, in all pairs of good and evil — for they mostly 
go in pairs — we would endeavor to choose such as have the 
greatest balance of good in them. This, is, indeed, precisely 
what mankind have been all along unconsciously doing, by 
rough experience and the inst'nct growing out of it, rather than by 
conscious deliberation. While many practical matters are so 
complicated, and their elements still so obscure, that it is 
impossible to say how far they are manageable, or how far they 
are intractable, it is still to be kept in mind that the hopeful 
view should have the benefit of the doubt, and work should be 
done where the promise seems best for a happy result. Owing 
to the advance of science and the increasing knowledge of 
environment, it is but reasonable to expect that hereafter there 
will be more intelligent deliberation in human affairs; but we 
are not to be sanguine in this direction, owing to the tyranny of 
feeling and the power over human conduct of immediate and 
individual, rather than of remote and general, interests. 

Section 236. — When not dominated by a corporate or con- 
ventional power, each individual acts for individual ends; and 
the action thus taking place and the ends thus accomplished 
make up the activities of the aggregate of society. What is best 
for society, taking long stretches of time into view, is not the aim 
of such action. It may contribute to this end, or it may not. 



476 USES IN GENERAL. \Chap. XXXVI. 

This can only be told by the result. Men act from immediate 
interest both when they clear off the timber from the rich plains 
and from the steep hillsides; but the one act makes the coun- 
try richer for a long time, and the other, after a brief period, 
makes it poorer. When a people is rising, then must the 
concurrence of individual action promote the good in a gen- 
eral way; but when a people is declining in prosperity, then 
must the aggregate of individual action be the cause and 
measure of such decline. Civilizations rise and fall; and for 
both tendencies there must be adequate cause in individual 
action. Long continued prosperity, through the operation on 
individuals and communities of emulation in the vanities 
of life, leads to effeminacy, weakness, and decay. Individ- 
uals may see and lament this general tendency, but they will 
not forego conventional gratifications, for the sake of resist- 
ing it. In a high civilization the leading classes in society will 
not cultivate large families, though they plainly see that in not 
doing so there may soon be none of their blood to inherit their 
virtues. More immediate considerations determine the result. 
People will dissipate because it is the fashion, though they know 
it will ultimate in degeneracy. Thus it is that the very causes 
of prosperity operate till they bring about adversity; and where 
there is a curve of ascent there must be one of descent. 

During the historical period nations and peoples have risen 
and fallen, with the attainment, at present, of greater general 
elevation than ever before. But even this general advance must 
reach its maximum — and in the quite near future, for anything 
we know to the contrary. We have emerged from the long 
period of semi-barbarism into which the Greek and Roman 
civilizations declined, and we may advance a good deal further 
by diversification rather than by elevation. As all movement 
goes in careers and not by continuous progress, every advance 
has its limit. If it proceeds further, the loss offsets the gain. 
This, of course, holds in every possible form of development. 
Many appear to believe that our civilization will be an exception. 
We are somewhat in the forenoon of its glorious day, and it is 



Sec. 2j6.] CAREERS OF MOVEMENT. 477 

easy to make the mistake of assuming that there will be no 
afternoon — its career is so long compared with the brief span 
of any one's conscious experience. 

It would have been very natural for the followers of Alexander, 
at one time, to • believe that they should indeed conquer the 
whole world ; but the progress of victory came to an end, and 
the empire of Alexander was soon broken to pieces. So the 
Romans might well have thought that universal empire would 
some day be theirs; but the extension of the empire was 
arrested, and at length enemies broke through its defences, 
loyalty to Rome declined, and the promises of a more flourish- 
ing time were answered at last by the overthrow and extinction 
of Roman power. For ages it seemed but reasonable to believe 
that Christianity would take posession of all the earth, so greatly 
had it extended through the world ; but Mohammedanism 
appeared and made more rapid progress than even Christianity 
had made. It drove in the Christian outposts, and contracted 
the Christian territory by establishing Mohammedanism where 
Christianity had been. Then, indeed, Islam may have imagined 
itself destined to universal dominion. Having superseded 
Christianity on the east and south of Europe, and having actu- 
ally planted itself on European territory on the west, surely 
it would eventually overwhelm all Christian Europe. But this 
dream was never fulfilled. If there is one power on earth which 
more than another has believed itself to be eternal, it is that of 
the pope. Its conceded divine origin and sanctions, and its 
absolute sovereignty over soul and body in Christendom, richly 
fed this confidence of expectation ; but this power, like every 
other, became tainted with the infirmities of its own greatness, 
and having reached its zenith, it began the long period of its 
decline. And then when Protestantism arose and spread like a 
consuming fire over central and western Europe, who could have 
foreseen that it would so soon find its balance, and there remain 
for ages, even while the forces, under whose auspices it had 
arisen, continued to progress ? Not one movement since history 
began has been continuous ; not one ever will be. 



478 USES IN general. [Chap. XXXVI. 

Section 237. — It may be objected that, if this doctrine be 
true, it disarms effort for a better future. It does nothing of 
the kind. The better, the possible good is only secured by 
eternal vigilance, by persistent struggle. There are periods, 
indeed — we may be entering upon one of them — when, without 
such labor systematically and steadily persevered in, the tending 
of certain lines of movement toward degeneracy may rapidly 
gain in strength; and there are times when, even with such 
labor as wisely directed as possible, the downward tendency 
may only be somewhat retarded. We may further illustrate by 
a conditional example: Admitting that the day will come when 
our great x\merican Republic will be transformed into an 
empire, and that there are causes now at work to bring about 
this result, what is our duty? To resist these tendencies to the 
utmost. It is only by so doing that we can preserve our self 
respect and prolong the era of freedom by staving off to a more 
distant time the fatal consummation. To allow the drift in this 
direction to go on without resistance, would be to show ourselves 
unworthy of our inheritance of liberty ; it would be to permit 
ourselves to degenerate into the status of subjects, and to 
deserve by inglorious indolence and truculence the fate of a ser- 
vile subordination to absolute masters. Even such as pursue 
phantoms are more to be commended than those who fall into 
habits of indifference and refuse to do anything. The practical 
and efficient mind is neither of them. It is said of a great his- 
torical character that he never left the possible good undone to 
waste effort on the impossible better. He endeavored to miti- 
gate the evils he could not cure; and this states very precisely 
what practical people may at any time consistently undertake to 
do. 

We have mainly to do with the present and the immediate 
future. There are here two phases — what shall we do, and what 
shall we not do. The principles herein advocated give sufficient 
encouragement in the direction of doing and efficient caution in 
the direction of not doing; and define that in the doing there is 
good to promote and evil to abate. It is only through per- 



Sec. 23 7. ,] WORK NEEDED. 479 

sistent endeavor that progress is made, and man and society 
elevated to higher planes. Not only is activity inculcated, 
but its direction in a general way indicated, in order to be most 
effective. 

Manliness, all heroic endeavor, most that is admirable in 
the world, come of the seeking to make things better, or to pre- 
vent them from becoming worse. "When shall love and sym- 
pathy and beneficence find ampler training, or patience, courage, 
dauntless devotion, nobler opportunities of exercise than in the 
war with evil ?" — (Caird). Let no one imagine that the writer 
would discourage considerate effort for the retardation or arrest 
of wrong tendencies. Whoever so construes this book mistakes 
its spirit and the import of its doctrines. An error of this kind 
would be like that of confounding the law-government of the 
universe with fatalism. No principle of nature properly under- 
stood can in the least weaken the motives to well-doing; it 
should assist in giving them proper direction. 

There is no rational warrant for insensibility, indifference, or 
misanthropy among the consequences of the doctrine of 
ineradicable evil. Rather should it chasten the tone cf charac- 
ter and quicken the sensibilities to know that the universe is not 
built up on principles of perpetual joy. The poet Bryant has 
said: "In short, the melancholy feelings, when called up by 
their proper and natural causes, and confined to their proper 
limits, are the sources of almost all our virtues. The tempera- 
ment of unbroken cheerfulness is the temperament of insensibil- 
ity." 

Section 238. — Nothing herein stated conflicts with the doc- 
trine of Evolution properly understood. Evolution does not 
cover all phenomena; it has its limitations; at a certain stage of 
the movement it passes into degradation and dissolution. If, 
in their present condition, the higher races of mankind on earth 
were at the very apex of all possible attainment in civilization, 
the doctrine of Evolution would be just as true as if mankind 
were to go on progressing for untold ages. Antagonism or con- 
flict is more fundamental than evolution (section 159). It 



4^o USES IN general. [Chap. XXX VI. 

reaches the entire distance of the career of movement while 
evolution stops where degradation sets in. Antagonism is 
more wide spread and sends its roots down deeper, though, it 
may be, it does not carry so many branches laden with fruitful 
results as the tree of Evolution. Antagonism is an indispens- 
able factor of Evolution (Chapter XXIL), and Evolution is one 
of the consequences of Antagonism, and they co-operate to the 
same ends so far as Evolution goes. They are names for differ- 
ent congeries of actions in the totality of phenomena. There 
is no quarrel between Evolution and Conflict. 

Section 239. — The universe, viewed as a system of 
adjustments under the play of antagonistic forces, presents 
marvelous examples of harmony and adaptation, whence 
the good flows, but never unmixed, being always accom- 
panied with its shadow of evil. Let us recapitulate a few 
instances which are open to the inspection of all. Thus, 
education cultivates sensibility and makes the necessary 
drudgeries of life more repulsive than before. Intelligence 
has its sources of enjoyment and improvement, but it often 
necessitates painful changes of opinion and of institutions which 
break up the intellectual and emotional habits of ages. The 
division of labor greatly facilitates production, but it makes 
automatons of laborers and is unfavorable both to intellectual 
and moral development. Invention in the application of the 
natural forces to the industries greatly increases man's power of 
production ; and while the wealth thus made possible is every- 
where regarded as a great good, if not the summum bonum itself, 
it secures the facilities for luxurious indulgence and sensual dis- 
sipation. It is doing for us what conquest did for the Romans ; 
and in the midst of education, political corruption is on the 
increase. With the progress of civilization numerous evils are 
springing into existence, which must be dealt with, to retard, 
palliate, or when possible, to exterminate them. In view of these 
tendencies and counter tendencies emerges the obvious moral 
that we should be fairly content with the opportunities and pos- 
sibilities of our own times. In some things they are better than 



Sec. 24O.] EXTREMES. 48 1 

times past, in other things, worse. The average of any age to 
come may not be a great deal better than the average of the 
present. Indeed, it may be doubted whether the future will 
ever bring an age more buoyant and hopeful than that in which 
we live (section 189). The lurid glare of its evils is quite 
dimmed in the blaze of the lights which its conquests for good 
have everywhere kindled. 

Section 240. — Attention has already been called to the pen- 
chant of the human mind first to seek rest in extremes. When 
the mind sets out it is apt to swing far in a particular direction 
before it stops. It is an example of motion in the direction of 
least resistance; it is easier thus to do than to keep on weighing 
opposing considerations, and meantime hold the judgment in 
suspense under the influence of all the apparent contradiction 
of reasons. The holding of the judgment in abeyance is not a 
satisfactory process to most minds. It is felt to be characterless, 
and neither one thing nor the other, totally without those strong 
and striking features with which decisive opinions flatter human 
egotism. 

The elaborators of science have partaken quite fully with 
others in this weakness of our common nature. In most 
instances in which the evidence has been slow in accumulating, 
there have been usually two or more parties advocating con- 
flicting theories, till at last it had to be admitted that all were 
in error in being extreme and exclusive, but each, perhaps, in 
the right, in elaborating a component element of the integral 
truth. Geology had its Neptunian and Plutonian schools, whose 
hostility was completely disarmed under more comprehensive 
views which utilized the truth in both. Even the doctrine of 
development has crept along from one extreme to another. 
First, its principal factor was held to be that of use or appe- 
tency (Lamark); secondly, the direct action of the environment, 
together with migration, and isolation from the parent stock 
(St. Hilaire, BurTon, Wagner, Spencer) ; thirdly, natural selec- 
tion (Darwin and Wallace). But maturer consideration is show- 
ing how these causes are related to one another, and even 



482 USES IN GENERAL. \Chap. XXXVI. 

blended with still others, in the production of the phenomena in 
question. The natural methods are not so poverty-stricken as 
the resources of the human mind appear usually to be; and 
further examples of extremism would only be tedious. Per- 
haps the writer has given a practical illustration of it in his treat- 
ment of Conflict; the reader must judge. 

These considerations bear on the present subject in this, that 
the same tendency to the exclusiveness of extreme opinions 
characterizes human effort for the correction of abuses, even 
more than in the prosecution of science. It is easy to imagine 
a remedy on the warrant of a partial and fragmentary view of 
what is for the most part exceedingly complicated. It is the 
cheap and easy method. It is a far higher exercise of human 
power to take a comprehensive grasp of all the considerations, 
and find their logical balance, than to deal with them in the 
usual summary and extreme method. Unfortunately the results 
of wholeness of conception are apparently so tame as to attract 
little notice and obtain little credit. The moderate but compre- 
hensive measures which are most practical and efficient, are not 
apt to take the fancy of dashing and impetuous reformers; 
nevertheless they stand wear and tear and can afford to bide 
their time. Optimism and pessimism, with all the brood of vain 
speculations and practical foibles to which they have given rise, 
are forms of ultraism which must share the common fate of 
perishable things. In a better philosophy, the optimism of .God- 
win and the pessimism of Schopenhauer must give way to the 
meliorism of Sully and others. 

Section 241. — Possibly it may be in the nature of the view 
of life, which it has been the object of these chapters to define, 
to inculcate humility, and teach discretion in the presence of 
any evil of life with which we propose to deal. It should mod- 
erate expectancy, temper enthusiasm, and repress vagary. We 
are not, however, to be too sanguine of such results. There 
will be fanatics probably while the world lasts. But there is 
always a borderland where means avail. People who do not 
think need no guidance in this respect; they are always on the 



Sec. 242.] RESIGNATION. 4^3 

safe side, believing with the many who take their opinions from 
"the air." It is the more intellectually active, without sufficient 
guidance or a sufficient basis of intellectual material to work on, 
that are most apt to run into the excesses of extreme opinions. 
Some generous natures might fall into extravagances, who, with 
a better philosophy as a chart for guidance, would not commit 
this error. 

Section 242. — This view of nature and of life should teach 
resignation. If certain forms of evil are inevitable, and to be 
looked for, we shall not be taken by surprise when they come, 
and we shall deal with them as with any intractable thing. We 
are compelled every day of our lives to recognize certain neces- 
sities, and to adapt ourselves to them; and when these necessi- 
ties involve suffering, we summon the necessary hardihood to 
meet them all the better for recognizing the fact that they are 
necessities. Happily there is a law of our nature by which we 
become "reconciled to inevitable destiny." Although not quite 
so true now as when Spinoza wrote, it is nevertheless still true, 
and always will be, that "human power is greatly limited, and is 
infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes; and thus 
it is that we have no absolute power of adapting to our use 
things external to ourselves. Still, all that befalls us contrary to 
what reason requires for our use and convenience, we bear with 
equanimity, if we do but know that we have fairly done our 
duty, that the power we possess does not extend so far as would 
have enabled us to escape the evil that has happened, and that 
we are a pait of nature at large, whose orders we obey." And 
this is but a return, with some improvement, to the good old 
doctrine of the Stoics, which Seneca thus states: "There is 
not in the scale of nature a more inseparable connection of 
cause and effect than in the case of happiness and virtue; nor 
anything that more naturally produces the one, or more neces- 
sarily presupposes the other. For what is it to be happy, but 
for a man to content himself with his lot, in a cheerful and 
quiet resignation to the appointments of God ? " A writer in the 
Fortnightly casts it in the forms of modern thought as follows : 



484 " USES IN GENERAL. [Chap. XXXVI. 

"Whether life be worth having or not, whether a wise man ought 
or ought not to have chosen it, had he had the choice, life at 
all events we have, the choice has not been given us, and the 
only right thing for each of us to do, our bounden duty, to 
ourselves and to humanity, is, here and, now, wisely and man- 
fully, to make the best of it."— (T. W. Rhys Davids). Another : 
" The true philosophy on this as on all themes is neither optim- 
ism nor pessimism, but omm'sm, which sees both the good and 
the evil in nature, and aims to make the best of both." — (Dr. 
G. M. Beard). Even when we are sure that the cloud threatens 
it is well not wholly to overlook its "silver lining." At any 
rate if the storm must come, breast it. This is illustrated, in a 
grim way, it is true, by what a surgeon told of "after the battle" 
during our late war. Several officers were in the extemporized 
hospital, the worse for the battle. Two colonels were mortally 
wounded and knew they must die. One of them gave up to 
lamentation and despair; the other so far maintained his forti- 
tude as not only to command himself, but to exhort his comrade 
to "die like a man." It was not long till both were silent in 
"the sleep that knows no waking" even amid the tumults of 
war. And our surgeon remembered the better example of the 
stoic soldier in "the hour and article of death," when in the 
more trying, because more self-conscious, times of the unbroken 
stillness of peace, it came his turn to lie down and die. Meet 
the inevitable we must, whether manfully or like poltroons. 

Section 243. — The morality of this philosophy is founded on 
a very different basis from that of Stoicism or Puritanism, and 
yet like them, it inculcates the value of self-denial. It was in 
this interest Stoicism had such wide-spread influence, affecting 
even Christianity itself. Between judicious self-denial and fanat- 
ical self-mortification, there is a wide difference which has often 
been disregarded; hence, the harsh and dreary extremes of the 
puritan and the monk, and the often revolting devoutness of the 
hermit and recluse. Extremes always pass into error, and if 
the philosophy herein stated has any value, it is to show the 



Se£. 243.] THE MIDDLE WAY. 485 

importance of finding the line of least discordance among the 
opposing forces in conduct. 

In the Chinese philosophy the Mean is the method of virtue. 
On Buddhist authority it is thus stated: "But the Tathagata 
had discovered a Middle Path, which avoids these two extremi- 
ties, a path which opens the eyes and bestows understanding, 
which leads to peace of mind, to the higher wisdom, to full en- 
lightenment — in a word, to the Nirvana. And this path is the 
Noble Eightfold Path of right views, high aims, kindly speech, 
upright conduct, a harmless livelihood, perseverance in well- 
doing, intellectual activity, and earnest thought" — (From the 
Pali text of the Buddhist Pitakas in the so-called Sutra of the 
Foundation of the Kingdom of Righteousness.) The "extremi- 
ties " here referred to are sensual gratification and asceticism. 
The Nirvana is the peace which comes by the middle way 
through the eightfold path. According to Aristotle, "the 
Mean is as the right reason determines." Seneca says : • " He 
has reached the supreme good who is never sad, or excited by 
hope, but keeps an even and happy frame of mind by day and 
night." This oriental and classic doctrine of the Mean, or Mid- 
dle Way in morals, accepted by such great bodies of mankind 
and for such long periods, shows how surely the great moral 
systems of the world have been derived from large experience 
amid the conflicting impulses of human nature. 

The delusive and disappointing character of the prevalent 
optimistic idea that happiness and pleasure are to be had with- 
out a compensating sacrifice, is well shown by the fact that 
many who have tested it to its utmost, have been overtaken with 
incurable discontent. We must again repeat, what has been so 
often repeated and illustrated, that pleasure and happiness can 
only be had by paying their price; and that price consists in the 
judicious exercise of self-denial and self-restraint, and in the ply- 
ing of worthful industry as a condition of all the nobler forms of 
enjoyment. This is the Middle Way. In the aggregate, no 
work no life; in regard to the individual, no employment no con- 
tentment. The way of the hero is to stand to his post in the 
22 



486 USES IN general. [Chap. XXXVI. 

discharge of duty; and, not pursuing happiness as an end, he 
will achieve the most of it possible as the reward of right doing. 
There is nothing new in this; but the doctrine of Conflict shows 
how and why it is so, being part of the universal system in 
which there is contrast in the constitution of things and Conflict 
in the action of forces. 

Section 244. — If this be true, the principle has a logical 
value in assisting to determine what the true course is in rela- 
tion to the conduct of life. Any deep underlying principle, 
however, has this value. Evolution has it, and has exercised a 
powerful influence on the methods of regarding the course of 
history and of life. If the doctrine of Conflict be true — and it 
is — it has a similar logical value, and must co-operate with the 
doctrine of Evolution to shape the views of thinking people 
concerning the possibilities of life and destiny. 

Section 245. — Industrial and social changes are mainly 
dependent on the capabilities of knowledge. Civilization owes 
all its advantages over savagery to discovery and invention, 
together with the accumulation of wealth and population. The 
moral frame-work of civilized society would fall to pieces, but 
for the physico-mental basis on which it rests. There is no 
doubt an immense field for further amplification in this direction. 
As one century since no one could have had the remotest idea 
of what would be done in a hundred years, so now, we can have 
no conception of the changes which the next century will bring. 
The great achievements in discovery and invention so rapidly 
made within our own recollection, are calculated unduly to 
inflate our expectations. But even while science, art, education, 
and invention are not without difficulties and drawbacks, we, 
nevertheless, regard the aggregate of their results as greatly pre- 
ponderating in good; and out of this complication of causes 
springs an element from which there is much to hope. We 
refer to the mental discipline in consequence of which men 
hold their impulses in abeyance and do homage to the truth 
because it is the truth. It is the waiving of all bias in the inter- 
est of right thinking. So far as men are logical on the broadest 



Sec. 245.] EDUCATION. 487 

basis of fact, they may be just, for without being right in judg- 
ment it is impossible to be just in action. 

The very appliances of industry have become potential edu- 
cators for good or evil, and this unintentional, practical sort of 
education becomes contagious and spreads through the civilized 
world. In consequence of the multiplied uses of the natural 
forces, people are coming to lean less on providential inter- 
ference and more on the inexorable laws of those forces. What 
shall be taught and how, for the best result under the complica- 
tion of modern tendencies, — this may be the question of the 
times. Doubtless education must be adapted to the changing 
condition of things, and become associated with integral indus- 
try for the discipline of the body as well as of the mind, and 
though it may make little headway against the effects of the 
machine-industries, which are crushing the vitality and character 
out of a portion of the people, still it may play the part of a 
savior, be it ever so partial It may make little headway against 
the mighty vanities, which are more and more absorbing the 
energies of life, and which it nurses while it aims to cripple, 
nevertheless will it have value, even far short of accomplishing 
in full the herculean task before it, if in some gratifying measure, 
it shall cause common sense to take the place of common folly. 

But the good to be expected will not come so much through 
the influence of general education on the masses, as through 
the higher education which can only reach the comparatively 
few. If the directive agency of those most competent could be 
divorced from reckless ambition and class interests, and placed 
in situations where it would tell most for good, the world would 
soon be better off than it is. If this could be, the world's great- 
est benefactors would be those who prosecute research with the 
greatest acuteness, and the least warp of bias, and also such as, 
with true practical instincts, make the body of truth at hand 
most available for human well-being. We may picture Evolu- 
tion to be advancing in three different lines. One is character- 
ized by happiness, another by suffering, and the third by the 
directive agency growing out of science. It has been taken for 



488 conclusion. [Chap. XXXVI. 

granted throughout this work that pleasure predominates over 
pain in existence. We have attempted to show that with the 
multiplication of results which we call progress, the conditions 
of happiness increase, and that in a similar way the conditions 
of misery increase. The directive agencies in life will make 
mistakes in the future as they have in the past, no doubt, but 
notwithstanding the ever increasing complexity of the problems 
of life, the errors should be greatly eliminated, and a clear mar- 
gin of good results accrue to the credit of wiser direction in 
human affairs. And to this end it is believed that there are 
logical and moral uses for the principle of Conflict as an inex- 
pugnable factor of nature and life. 

Section 246. — But it is not so much what we suppose to be 
the utility of any doctrine that should recommend it to our 
acceptance. That may be a delusion and snare in the failure of 
accurate prevision, as a thousand examples in history prove. Is 
it founded in fact? Has it logical warrant? Is it true? This 
should be the direction of inquiry concerning any point of doc- 
trine under examination, whatever may seem to be its uses or 
abuses. It is quite the fashion among reviewers to commend a 
work for presenting the sunny side of life. That is indeed very 
well. If it be the object of a book merely to administer to the 
emotions, then should it stimulate those which are pleasurable 
rather than such as are painful. But when it concerns history, 
science, or the philosophy of science, the case is different. It 
would hardly do then to suppress truth for the sake of sunshine; 
and the author should be most commendable who, with the 
greatest vigor and least bias, sets forth the truth as it is. 



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The Science of Politics. 

By SHELDON AMOS, M. A., 

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CONTENTS: Chapter I. Nature and Limits of the Science of Politics; II. 
Political Terms; III. Political Reasoning; IV. The Geographical Area of Mod- 
ern Politics ; V. The Primary Elements of Political Life and Action ; VI. Con- 
stitutions; VII. Local Government; VIII. The Government of Dependencies; 
IX. Foreign Relations; X. The Province of Government; XI. Revolutions in 
States ; XII. Right and Wrong in Politics. 



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Polynesia, and North Africa— not only helped him with illustrations, but was of 
no small use to him in stimulating thought. Mr. Amos treats his subject broad« 
ly, and with the air of having studied it exhaustively. The work will be of real 
assistance to the student of political economy, and even to the reader who wishes 
to extend his general knowledge of politics without a regular course of reading." 
— Boston Transcript. 

" The work is one of the most valuable of its series, discussing its subject in 
all its phases as illustrated in the world's history. The chapters on Constitu- 
tions, on Foreign Relations, on the Province of Government, and on Right and 
Wrong in Politics, are particularly able and thoughtful. In that on Revolu- 
tions in States, the unreasonableness of the attempted revolution of the South- 
ern States in this country is disposed of in a few incisive sentences."— Boston 
Gazette. 

For sale by all booksellers ; or sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of price. 



New York : D. APPLETON & CO. 



DISEASES OF MEMORY 

AN ESSAY IN THE POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 

By TH. RIBOT, 

Author of "Heredity," etc. 



Translated prom the French bx WILLIAM HUNTINGTON SMITH. 



12mo. Cloth, $l.SO. 



"Not merely to scientific, but to all thinking men, this volume will prove 
intensely interesting."— New York Observer. 

"M. Ribot has bestowed the most painstaking attention upon his theme, 
and numerous examples of the conditions considered greatly increase the value 
and interest of the volume."— Philadelphia North American. 

" 'Memory,' says M. Kihot, ' is a general function of the nervous system. It 
is based upon the faculty possessed by the nervous elements of conserving a 
received modification and of forming associations.' And again : ' Memory is a 
biological fact. A rich and extensive memory is not a collection of impressions, 
but an accumulation of dynamical associations, very stable and very responsive 
to proper stimuli. . . . The brain is like a laboratory full of movement where 
thousands of operations are going on all at once. Unconscious cerebration, not 
being subject to restrictions of time, operating, so to speak, only in space, may 
act in several directions at the same moment. Consciousness is the narrow gate 
through which a very small part of all this work is able to reach us.' M. Ribot 
thus reduces diseases of memory to law, and his treatise is of extraordinary 
interest."— Philadelphia Press. 

" The general deductions reached by M. Ribot from the data here collected 
are summed up in the formulation of a law of regression, based upon the physio- 
logical principle that ' degeneration first affects what has been most recently 
formed,' and upon the psychological principle that 'the complex disappears 
before the simple because it has not been repeated so often in experience.' 
According to this law of regression, the loss of recollection in cases of general 
dissolution of the memory follows an invariable path, proceeding from recent 
events to ideas in general, then to feelings, and lastly to acts. In the best- 
known cases of partial dissolution or aphasia, forgetfulness follows the same 
course, beginning with proper names, passing to common nouns, then to ad- 
jectives and verbs, then to interjections, and lastly to gestures. M. Ribot sub- 
mits that the exactitude of his laws of regression is verified in those rare cases 
where progressive dissolution of the memory is followed by recovery, recollec- 
tions being observed to return in an inverse order to that in which they dis- 
appeared."— New York Sun. 

"To the general reader the work is made entertaining by many illustrations 
connected with such names as Linnaeus, Newton, Sir Walter Scott, Horace Ver- 
net, Gustave Dore, and many others." — Harrisburg Telegraph. 

"The whole subject is presented with a Frenchman's vivacity of style."— 
Providence Journal. 

"It is not too much to say that in no single work have so many curious 
esses been brought together and interpreted in a scientific manner." — Boston 
Evening Traveller. 

" Specially interesting to the general reader."— Chicago Interior. 



For sale by all booksellers; or sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of price. 
New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 



MYTH AND SCIENCE 

By TITO VIGNOLI. 



12mo. Cloth, $l.SO. 



Contents : The Ideas and Sources of Myth ; Animal Sensation and 
Perception ; Human Sensation and Perception ; Statement of the Prob- 
lem ; The Animal and Human Exercise of the Intellect in the Perception 
of Things ; The Intrinsic Law of the Faculty of Apprehension ; The His- 
torical Evolution of Myth and Science ; Of Dreams, Illusions, Normal and 
Abnormal Hallucinations, Delirium, and Madness. 

" His book is ingenious ; . . . his theory of how science gradually dif- 
ferentiated from and conquered myth is extremely well wrought out, and is 
probably in essentials correct." — Saturday Review. 

" Tito Vignoli's treatise is a valuable contribution to the public book- 
table at the present moment, when the issues between faith and fact are so 
much discussed. The author holds that the myth-making' faculty is a con- 
stant attendant of human progress, and that its action is manifest to-day in 
the most highly cultivated peoples as well as in the most undeveloped. 
The diiference is, that its activity in the former case is limited, or rather 
neutralized, by the scientific faculties, and consequently is no longer allowed 
to grow into legends and mythologies of the primitive pattern. The author 
traces both myth and science to their common source in sensation and per- 
ception, which he treats under the separate titles of ' animal ' and ' human.' 
He makes clear the distinctive operations of perception and apprehension, 
and traces, in a wide survey of history and human life, a most interesting 
array of examples illustrating the evolution of myth and science." — New 
York Home Journal. 

" The book is a strong one, and far more interesting to the general 
reader than its title would indicate. The learning, the acuteness, the strong 
reasoning power, and the scientific spirit of the author, command admira- 
tion." — New York Christian Advocate. 

" An essay of such length as to merit a different title, and of sufficient 
originality to merit more than common attention." — Chicago Times. 

" An attempt made, with much ability and no small measure of success, 
to trace the origin and development of the myth. The author has pursued 
his inquiry with much patience and ingenuity, and has produced a very 
readable and luminous treatise." — Philadelphia North American. 

" A very interesting work, which, first published in Italy, created a 
great deal of interest there, and will scarcely do less in this country." — 
Boston Post. 

"This intensely interesting volume." — Albany (New York) Press. 

" It is a curious if not startling contribution both to psychology and to 
the early history of man's development." — Neio York Worl 



For sale by all booksellers ; or sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of price. 



New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 



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